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Q  U  E  S  T  I  O  N  S 


OF     THE 


D  A  Y: 


ECONOMIC    AND    SOCIAL 


BY 


DR.    WILLIAM     ELDER 


Library. 


P  II I L  A  D  E  L  P  II  I  A  : 
HKNUY     (JAIiKY     13  A  HID, 

INDUSTRIAL  PUI 

406  Walnut  Street. 

1871. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1871.  by 

W  LIjLIAM    EL.DER, 
in   the  (Uhce  ot    the  Librarian  of  ('oiigress.   at  Washing-ton,   ]).(.' 


HlN«!\VALT  &  BRiiWN,  1'KINTEnS, 
PCMi  BuiMlng,  S.  W. comer  7th  and  Cbcstuut  Hi.-., 
r  1 1  i  i   \  i>  '   i.  i-  II I  A  . 


PREFACE. 


THE  purpose  governing  in  the  composition  of  this  treatise  was 
not  so  much  the  discussion  and  settlement  of  the  questions  involved 
in  the  matters  now  occupying  the  people  of  the  United  States,  and 
awaiting  solution  hy  the  thinkers  and  voters  of  the  day,  as  a  desire 
to  help  the  popular  investigation,  by  suggesting  the  underlying 
principles  which  must,  at  last,  solve  all  the  problems  of  public 
policy.  Aware  of  the  difficulties  of  my  task,  I  intended,  at  the 
beginning  of  my  work,  to  give  it  the  unassuming  title  of  STUDIES 
in  Political  Economy.  I  intended  nothing  else  or  more,  and  felt 
that  T  must  avoid  the  pretentious  claim  of  a  comprehensive  or 
conclusive  treatment  of  all  the  subjects,  or  all  the  principles  prom 
ised  by  such  a  title  as  "  The  Causes  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations,"  or 
those  more  frequently  adopted  by  the  higher  authorities,  "  Princi 
ples,  or  Elements,  of  Political  Economy;"  and  I  must  be  allowed, 
also,  to  say,  in  the  personal  confidence  which  a  preface  allows 
between  an  author  and  his  readers,  that  under  terror  of  the  failures 
made,  and  in  sight  of  the  wrecks  that  strew  this  uncharted  sea  of 
speculation,  and  the  disrepute  into  which  the  writers  on  Political 
Economy  have  fallen,  I  felt  anxious  to  avoid  even  the  most  miti 
gated  form  of  the  old  reproach.  This  feeling  drove  me  upon  the 
choice  of  a  title  less  appropriate,  but  chosen  because  it  is  less  alarm 
ing  to  the  common  sense  of  the  reading  public.  I  would  not  cheat 
the  reader  by  the  label  upon  the  back  of  my  book,  but  T  would  not 
deter  him  from  opening  it.  My  purpose  is  to  provoke  and  assist 
inquiry  in  matters  of  such  practical  importance  as  those  herein 
discussed,  and  the  title  page  must  not  be  allowed  to  scare  away  the 
reader. 


4  PREFACE. 

This  book  is,  nevertheless,  in  spirit  and  purpose,  a  series  of  studies 
in  the  principles  which  rule  the  questions  of  the  time — the  practical 
questions,  which  the  people  are  engaged  in  settling  into  the  policy 
of  their  social  and  economic  conduct.  It  is  an  outlook  upon  public 
affairs,  taken  from  an  American  observatory,  and  its  discussions  are 
"  calculated,"  as  astronomers  say,  for  the  Western  Hemisphere. 

Holding  that  Political  Economy  is  National  in  its  purview  and 
range,  as  opposed  to  abstract,  general,  or  cosmopolitan,  T  am  content" 
that  my  thoughts  shall  be  understood  to  proceed  from  so  narrow  a 
stand-point  of  observation;  nor  would  it  embarrass  m«  in  the  least 
if  my  doctrines  should  foe  pronounced  not  only  American,  but  even 
Pennsylvanian,  in  spirit  and  inspiration,  for  I  would  have  them 
something  certain,  settled,  and  actual,  rather  than  the  general  and 
universal  that  comprises  everything,  and   belongs  to   nothing  in 
particular.     For  the  reason  that  in  the  study  of  man,  I  would  take 
for  examination  a  completely  representative  individual — neither  a 
giant  nor  a  dwarf,  an  idiot  nor  a  genius,  but  an  average  well-rounded 
and  well-balanced  man,  I  adopt  what  I  take  to  bo  a.  community 
whose  forces,  functions,  and  attainments  best  answer  as  a  standard 
of  societary  policy;   and  the  reader  may  as  well  be   apprised   in 
advance,  that  this  book  is  written  under  the  conviction   that  tlio 
United  States  is  the  field  of  inquiry  which,  better  than  any  other, 
promises  the  whole  truth  in  matters  of  political,  economic,  and  social 
speculation  ;  and,  that  Pennsylvania,  by  its  eminently  representative 
character,  is  the  focal  point  of  the  great  facts  which  the  nation 
offers  for  instructive  study.     This  State  is  neither  eminently  com 
mercial,  agricultural,  nor  manufacturing.     It  is  neither  so  near  the 
sea  as  to  lose  its  nationality,  nor  so  far  from  its  coast  as  to  be  inju 
riously  separated  from  the  outside  world.     Its  climnte  and  soil  do 
not  arbitrarily  determine  or  restrict  its  industries,  but  it  has,  in  all 
things,  that  happy  balance  of  economic  interests,  and  such  a  diver 
sity  of  nationalities  in  its  population,  as  assures  it  a  condition  and 
position  of  equilibrium  ;  or,  let  me  say,  in  my  vernacular,  American 


PREFACE.  0 

English,  enables  her  to  carry  her  head  "level"  in  economic  and 
political  questions. 

There  is  more  meaning  than  appears  at  lirst  sight  in  her  sobriquet, 
the  Keystone  State.  Such  a  claim  as  this  will  doubtless  be  disputed 
by  every  other  State  in  the  Union.  Perhaps,  not  one  of  them  would 
concede  her  this  rank  as  against  itself'.,  but  if  the  point  were  sub 
mitted  to  the  arbitration  of  a  general  vote,  she  would  carry  the 
majority  handsomely,  as  the  majority  has  voted  with  her  in  every 
Presidential  election  since  the  formation  of  the  Federal  Union. 

It  is  not  preeminence  in  any  special  excellence  that  we  are  here 
insisting  upon,  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the  very  absence  of  any 
thing  like  such  unevenuess  in  her  characteristics  that  gives  her  the 
position  of  an  exemplar  in  economic  policy.  If  there  is  anything 
in  a  complete  diversification  of  resources  and  of  industries,  and  in 
the  resulting  perfect  division  of  productive  labor,  she  has  it.  It  is 
this  that  makes  her  a  model  for  the  study  of  economists,  and  it  is 
from  this  rounded  entirety  of  her  character  that  her  distinguished 
Political  Economists,  Frederick  List,  Henry  C.  Carey,  and  Stephen 
Colwell  derived  the  data  and  drift  of  their  studies.  Upon  the 
system  of  the  first  named,  who  confessed  that  he  learned  here  all 
that  he  afterwards  taught,  we  have  the  verdict  of  Germany's  accept 
ance  and  practical  adoption,  and  that  verdict,  besides,  vindicated 
by  the  astonishing  achievements  which  have  recently  resulted  from 
a  long-continued  and  persistent  conformity  to  its  principles  and 
policy.  Such  has  been  the  influence  of  Professor  List  upon  the 
policy  and  destiny  of  Prussia,  that  it  is  safe  to  say  that  if  he  had 
not  guided  its  industrial  system,  a  Uismarck,  a  Moltke,  and  an 
Emperor  of  Germany  would  have  been  impossible  to-day. 

Northern  Europe  has  already  recognized  Mr.  Caroy  (named 
second  here  only  because  later  in  date),  as  the  Authority  of  the 
new  time,  and  Interpreter  of  its  new  necessities;  and  I  venture  to 
predict  that  the  last  in  the  order  of  date  and  labor,  Mr.  Colwell, 
will,  in  due  time  be  recognized  as  one  of  the  greater  lights  in  the 


'»  PREFACE. 

firmament  of  the  science  when  the  fermentation  of  the  problems  of 
Finance  shall  come  to  take  a  settled  and  certain  form. 

The  inconvenience  and  the  labor  of  assigning  to  the  several 
authors,  who  have  been  my  teachers  and  helpers  in  the  study  of 
my  subjects,  their  respective  shares  in  the  matter  that  I  have  used, 
and  the  overloading  of  my  pages  with  such  frequent  acknowledg 
ments  as  are  due  to  them  would  have  compelled,  determined  me  to 
decline  the  task.  But  I  had  another  reason  or  reasons  for  so  doing ; 
promiscuous  reading  and  study  through  many  years,  renders  it  quite 
impossible  for  me  to  trace  home  to  its  sources  the  information 
obtained  and  used ;  besides,  I  would  not  willingly  assume  to  settle 
the  claims  to  originality  for  even  the  principal  matters  borrowed  from 
them.  Moreover,  I  would  hesitate  to  make  my  authorities  respon 
sible  for  my  use  of  their  facts  and  doctrines  by  quoting  them  in 
foot  notes. 

ITcre,  however,  I  am  bound  to  say  that  my  indebtedness  to  Mr. 
Carey  is  so  great  that  only  those  who  are  intimately  acquainted 
with  his  works  can  duly  estimate  it.  I  believe  that  no  future 
writer  upon  any  of  the  subjects  embraced  in  the  wide  field  of  his 
studies  will  be  able  to  do  much  more,  to  any  purpose,  than  give  his 
doctrines  some  required  difference  of  presentment  and  application. 

Tn  like  manner,  I  would  acknowledge  the  heaviest  obligations  to 
Frederick  List.  Alexander  Hamilton,  and  to  Stephen  Colwell.  To 
Parke  Godwin,  Esq.,  I  am  indebted  largely  for  matter  used  freely 
in  my  second  and  third  introductory  chapters;  and  to  Horace 
Greeley,  and  the  domestic  and  foreign  correspondents  of  the  Tribune, 
for  valuable  information  employed  in  discussing  the  current  coopera 
tive  movements  of  the  time. 

It  will  doubtless  occur  to  the  reader  that  Taxation  and  National 
Finance  are  among  the  most  considerable  and  pressing  "questions 
of  the  day."  They  hold,  indeed,  such  a  place  among  the  topics  now 
under  popular  and  official  consideration,  that  all  other  subjects  of 
public  interest  actually  converge  in  them.  T  intended  to  embrace 


PREFACE.  7 

them,  but  had  not  advanced  very  fur  in  their  treatment  until  I 
found  that  they  must  be  reserved  fur  a  separate  treatise,  if  they 
were  to  be  discussed  to  any  purpose.  There  are  no  questions  of 
public  affairs  so  much  debated,  and  none  that  so  much  need  a  more 
critical  examination  than  they  receive  in  the  controversies  main 
tained  upon  them;  moreover,  there  are  none  more  difficult  of 
treatment.  In  my  apprehension  of  them,  I  should  be  obliged  to 
confront  the  opinions  that  now  rule  in  the  administration  of  our 
State  and  National  affairs.  I  can  neither  agree  with  the  policy 
of  the  National  Treasury,  nor  with  the  most  influential  conductors 
of  the  public  press.  The  discussion'would  be  one  unbroken  con 
troversy,  requiring  room,  arrangement,  and  readers  wholly  incon 
sistent  with  the  purpose  and  drift  of  the  other  parts  of  this  treatise. 
The  closing  chapters  in  the  division  entitled  Guaranty  ism,  are 
intended  to  awaken  attention  to  the  great  social  question  of  the 
time — the  strife  between  labor  and  capital.  He  would  be  a  bold 
man  who  would  assume  to  settle  this  last  and  most  difficult  problem 
that  has  ever  yet  arisen  in  the  progress  of  civilization — a  question 
upon  whose  happy  solution  and  settlement  depends  the  general 
welfare  in  an  eminent  degree.  Every  earnest  man's  best  help  is 
due  to  it,  and  I  have  contributed  what  under  the  circumstances  I 
could.  For  the  faults  which  admit  of  no  fair  justification — those 
for  which  I  am  fully  responsible — I  have  no  right  to  offer  any 
apology. 

W.  E. 

1824  MT.  VEIINOX  STREET, 

Philadelphia,  June,  1871. 


TITLES    OF   THE    CHAPTERS. 


THAI-TICK. 

1.     iNTUonucTOHY.—  Political  Economy 

[j                                      Formation  of  Society 14 

HI.                                     Civilization 20 

\y  Migration  and  Occupation  of  the  Eatth  33 

V.     Wealth — the  Laws  and  Conditions  of  its  Growth '...  40 

VI.     Sources  of  Advancement  in  Wealth Sii 

VII.     Population— Law  of  Increase 70 

Yin.     Distribution  of  Wealth— Wages 85 

IX.     Money,  as  an  Exchanger  of  Values 106 

X.     Money,  as  a  Producer  while  acting  as  an  Exchanger 120 

XL     Paper  Money,  and  incidentally,  of  Banks 133 

XII.     Commerce 157 

III 1.  Trade  hetweeik-Natioiis  in  diverse  Geographic,  and  Eco 

nomic  Conditions 176 

XIV.  Free  Trade  and  Protection 100 

XV.     Doctrine  and  Policy  of  Protection 204 

XVI.  The  most  Prominent  and  Plausible  Objections  to  Pro 
tection v 221 

XVII.     Protection  in  the  Historic  Nations 235 

XVIII.     Guarantyism 247 

XIX.     Secret  Societies 204 

XX.     Coo'j oration— Survey  of  the  Field 281 

XXI.                              Stores,  Manufactories,  Banks 295 

XXII.                             In  the  United  States 315 

8 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 


INTR  OD  UCTOR  Y. 


CHAPTER    I. 

POLITICAL      ECONOMY. 

Definition  of  Political  Economy;  its  subjects. — Individuality  and  Association, 
the  centripetal  and  centrifugal  forces  of  society. — Their  material  analogues. — 
A  man  the  type  of  a  society. — Province  of  Political  Economy  limited  while 
its  bearings  are  unbounded. — What  it  teaches  the  Statesman,  the  Moralist,  and 
the  Religionist. 

POLITICAL  'ECONOMY  is  the  theory  of  human  well-being,  in  its 
relations  with  the  production,  distribution,  and  consumption  of 
wealth. 

Its  subjects  are  man  and  those  external  things  which  minister  to 
his  earthly  wants.  It  is  concerned  with  his  mental  and  moral 
nature,  so  far  as  these  are  involved  in  his  societary  relations,  and, 
with  his  physical  necessities,  and  those  material  things  which  are 
made  to  satisfy  them. 

OF    MAN    AS    A    SUBJECT    OF   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

Association  with  his  fellow-men  is  the  first  and  greatest  neces 
sity  of  man's  life.  It  is  indispensable  to  his  intellectual  and  social 
faculties,  and  equally  so  to  his  physical  welfare.  For  the  care  and 
culture  of  his  body,  mind,  and  morals,  and  for  their  due  enjoy 
ments,  he  depends  upon  others  from  birth  till  death. 

For  the  best  service  of  his  industrial  powers,  he  requires  the 
largest  and  most  direct  commerce  with  the  world  around  him. 
2  9 


10  INTRODUCTORY. 

Every  individual  soul  holds  beneficial  relations  with  every  created 
thing,  and  is  crippled  in  the  proportion  that  it  is  deprived  of  inter 
change,  possession,  and  enjoyment.  The  attractive  impulses  of  his 
constitution,  which  answer  to  this  large  range  of  relations,  gather 
men  into  families,  communities,  states,  and  nations,  and  engage 
them  in  a  commerce  of  ideas,  commodities,  and  enterprises  with 
each  other  and  with  the  world.  Trade,  travel,  and  correspondence 
spring  from  them,  and  the  highest  forms  and  richest  fruits  of  human 
development  are  due  to  them.  This  associative  attraction  is  ana 
logous  to  the  material  law  of  gravitation,  which  groups  the  atoms  of 
the  universe  in  planets,  solar  systems,  and  constellations;  ordering 
and  collocating  them  around  their  several  centres;  the  local  centres 
by  counter  attraction,  holding  each  group  in  its  own  sphere  and 
office,  and  every  individual  of  each  group  in  its  appropriate  position. 

This  tendency  to  unity  would  produce  the  evil  of  uniformity  in 
character,  and  of  centralization  in  place,  if  it  were  not  counter 
balanced  by  the  equally  essential  provision  for  securing  and  de 
veloping  his  Individuality.  It  is  the  related  diiferences  of  indi 
viduals  which  evoke  their  qualities  and  stimulate  their  growth. 
Gregarious  animals  are  too  much  alike  to  educate  each  other  into 
higher  capabilities;  but  men,  differing  in  tastes,  feelings,  and  capa 
cities,  play  perpetually  upon  each  other's  powers,  and  develop  them 
by  the  mutual  action  and  reaction  of  social  commerce;  their  dis- 
tinctiveness  ever  growing  in  the  ratio  of  the  number  and  variety  of 
the  relations  subsisting  between  them.  Savage  society,  even  within 
its  limited  range  of  mutual  services  and  dependencies,  develops  the 
individual,  diversifies  the  character,  and  enriches  the  aggregate  of 
the  horde,  by  considerably  multiplying  the  functions  and  modifying 
the  faculties  of  its  members.  But  it  is  in  civilized  societies  that  the 
immense  number  of  mental  and  social  affinities  and  industrial  inter 
changes  have  opportunity  to  display  their  power  in  the  development 
of  the  highest  individuality  through  the  most  varied  and  complete 
association. 

The  operation  of  these  two  forces — Association  and  Individu 
ality — are  thus  reciprocal  and  corroborative  in  enhancing  each 
other  and  in  promoting  the  progress  of  the  man,  the  community, 
and  the  race. 

It  is  a  universal  law  of  matter,  animate  and  inanimate,  that  dif 
ference  of  quality,  condition,  or  position,  excites  a  manifestation  of 


POLITICAL    ECONOMY.  11 

force  and  an  interchange  of  activities.  In  chemistry,  new  com 
binations  give  new  and  varied  powers  to  the  atoms  of  matter ;  in 
astronomy,  difference  of  position  and  magnitude  give  rise  to  and 
determine  the  motions  of  the  celestial  bodies.  Association  and 
individuality  are  exact  correlatives  of  the  centripetal  and  centrifu 
gal  forces  which  hold  the  orbs  at  their  appropriate  distances  from 
their  centres,  and  propel  them  in  their  respective  orbits;  they  cor 
respond  also  to  that  counterbalance  of  cohesion  and  repulsion 
which  keeps  the  particles  of  bodies  in  position,  and  gives  them 
freedom,  while  it  enforces  order  and  harmony  in  action.  Especially 
arid4  eminently,  association  and  individuality  obtain  in  the  organism 
of  the  human  body,  in  which  a  thousand  different  functions  are 
secured  in  their  specialty  of  character  and  service,  while  they  are 
perfectly  associated  and  coordinated  in  integral  unity.  A  man  is  a 
society  in  the  least  form,  and  his  structure  and  functions  intimate 
the  policy  of  the  larger  society,  or  grand  man,  to  which  a  complete 
community  conforms.  St.  Paul  (Ephesians  iv.  16)  finds  the  ana 
logue  of  a  perfect  Christian  society  in  this  individualism  and  co 
operation  of  the  constituents  of  the  human  frame,  and  borrows  from 
it  an  argument  and  an  illustration.  He  calls  the  church  a  perfect 
man,  of  which  Christ  is  the  head,  ufrom  whom  the  whole  body, 
fitly  joined  together  and  compacted  by  that  which  every  joint  sup- 
plieth,  according  to  the  effectual  working  in  the  measure  of  every 
part,  maketh  increase  of  the  body  unto  the  edifying  of  itself  in 
love"  (or,  in  harmony).  These  forces  decentralize  and  diversify  the 
societary  organism  to  secure  individual  liberty  and  development, 
and  at  the  same  time  coordinate  the  elements  and  subordinate  their 
agencies  as  the  harmony  of  entirety  requires.  Individuality  takes 
care  of  the  severalties;  association  organizes  them  into  unity  of 
general  uses. 

It  is  admitted  that  the  individual  man  has  moral  and  spiritual 
faculties  and  necessities  which  do  not  fall  within  the  province  of 
political  economy  proper;  and  that  communities  have  interests 
which  in  like  manner  lie  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  civil  govern 
ment.  Yet  it  must  be  also  admitted  that  all  the'interests  of  this 
life  and,  conditionally,  of  the  next,  are  so  far  involved  in  the  tem 
poral  welfare  of  man,  as  it  depends  upon  material  conditions,  that 
political  economy  stands  directly  related  to  politics,  morals,  and  re 
ligion.  It  has,  therefore,  something  essential  to  teach  the  States- 


12  INTRODUCTORY. 

man  and  the  Moralist,  as  well  as  the  producer,  the  exchanger,  and 
the  consumer  of  commodities. 

As  a  system  of  the  laws  which  govern  society,  its  first  principles 
instruct  the  Statesman  that  upon  the  utmost  possible  diversification 
of  business  pursuits  depend  the  growth,  the  wealth  and  the  strength 
of  the  State,  and  of  the  people  individually  j  that,  the  worth  of  the 
infinitely  varied  capabilities  of  a  people  is  to  be  secured  and  made 
available  to  the  whole  community,  only  by  providing  for  them  a 
corresponding  variety  of  industrial  and  social  functions. 

The  Moralist,  who  cannot  be  ignorant  of  the  influence  of  circum 
stances  upon  character  and  conduct,  especially  upon  that  mass  of 
men  whose  improvement  he  seeks — of  all,  indeed,  except  the  race* 
of  moral  heroes  and  martyrs — may  learn  how  to  change  the  necessi 
ties,  which  lead  to  violation  of  the  social  laws,  into  opportunities, 
which  tend  to  induce  conformity;  how  enforced  idleness  and  de 
pendency  may  be  replaced  by  self-support,  and  the  respect  which 
grows  out  of  it  for  the  rights  of  property,  and  the  resulting  interest 
felt  in  the  general  welfare ;  how  a  partnership  in  a  common  pros 
perity  takes  away  the  temptations  which  have  their  source  and 
provocation  in  the  wants  and  necessities  of  poverty  and  privation — 
in  a  word ;  he  will  see  and  feel  the  force  of  the  Great  Teacher's 
injunction:  Seek  first  the  divine  order  of  society,  which  He  calls 
the  Kingdom  of  God,  that  men  may  be  delivered  from  a  dangerous 
desire  for  what  they  shall  eat,  what  they  shall  drink,  or  where 
withal  they  shall  be  clothed.  (Matthew  vi.  31.) 

Nor  can  the  Religionist  rightly  neglect  the  study  of  those  first 
principles  in  the  economy  of  human  society  which  so  deeply  concern 
its  spiritual  welfare.  He  must  not  leave  to  political  policy,  to 
economical  and  philanthropic  endeavor,  the  whole  charge  of  reform 
atory  enterprise.  His  Master,  who  taught  self-denial  as  a  means  of 
spiritual  discipline,  never  said  a  word  in  commendation  of  that 
poverty  which  means  want,  ignorance,  slavery,  despair  and  death ; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  went  about  doing  good  to  the  bodies,  as  well 
as  to  the  souls,  of  men.  The  fasting  which  he  approved  was  not 
that  of  beggary  or  necessity,  but  the  free  well-principled  restraint 
of  the  appetites.  Among  the  beatitudes  we  do  not  find  a  blessing 
upon  poverty  in  temporal  goods,  but  upon  the  poor  in  spirit,  nor  are 
they  pronounced  blessed  who  suffer  for  lack  of  material  benefits,  but 
those  who  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness ;  and  those  only 


POLITICAL    ECONOMY.  13 

are  required  to  renounce  their  wealth  in  whom  avarice  and  covet- 
ousness  are  idolatry. 

Thus  all  who  are  either  teachers  or  governors,  with  all  who  are 
in  any-wise  responsible  for  the  well-being  of  their  fellow  men,  are 
deeply  concerned  to  know  the  principles  and  order  which  best  pro 
mote  it. 


CHAPTER    II. 

OF    THE    FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY. 

Of  the  Formation  of  Society:  History  of  its  progress. — EDENISM:  Conditions 
of  the  primitive  race. — Communism  and  social  harmony. — Suffering  not  the 
only  source  of  development. — SAVAGISM  :  Nature  in  rebellion  to  human  au 
thority  ;  fratricidal  war. — Clans  and  Hordes. — Industry  and  C«mmerce  nar 
rowly  limited. — Rule  of  the  strongest. — Democracy  in  government. — Property 
rights  held  by  possession. — No  international  or  intertribal  law. — Liberty  with 
out  security. — In  a  true  order  rights  and  duties  are  commensurate,  and  life  is  a 
system  of  equitable  exchanges. — Indolence,  ignorance,  immorality,  irreligion, 
selfishness  of  the  Savage. — Dwarfed  individuality;  association  but  little  larger 
than  the  animal  instincts  prompt  ;  Commerce,  public  sentiment,  and  gen 
eral  ideas  of  the  lowest  grade. — Analogy  to  infancy  of  an  individual.— North 
American  Indians  probably  a  degenerate  race. — PATRIARCHISM  :  The  family 
polity  extended  to  a  larger  community. — The  type  of  all  the  despotisms. — An 
association  that  represses  individuality. — Productive  Industry  begins,  property 
in  the  soil  recognized,  commerce  initiated,  money  used. — Men  become  self-sup 
plying. — Women  and  children  are  slaves. — Monarchy  and  political  slavery  are 
better. — Egyptian  bondage  more  favorable  than  the  rule  of  the  Patriarchs. — 
The  system  analogous  to  childhood. — BARBARISM  :  Productive  industry,  arts 
and  sciences  greatly  advanced. — In  advance  of  civilization  of  Western  Europe 
previous  to  the  inauguration  of  the  new  physical  philosophy. — Characteristics 
contrasted  with  those  of  civilization. — Difference  in  powers  of  association  and 
growth  of  individualitj". — Correspondence  of  all  the  phases  of  society  to  ages  in 
the  life  of  an  individual. 

A  THEORY  of  human  history,  embracing  its  known  facts  and  sup 
plying  such  as  are  logically  necessary  to  its  completeness,  must  help 
us  in  the  endeavor  to  unfold  the  philosophy  of  societary  organiza 
tion.  It  will,  at  least,  serve  as  a  study,  though  it  falls  short  of 
demonstration  by  induction. 

EDENISM. 

The  primitive  state  of  man  on  the  earth  is  a  matter  of  faith  to 
those  who  believe  they  have  the  knowledge  of  it  by  divine  revela 
tion,  by  their  authorities,  however  inspired,  or.  by  accepted  tradi 
tion.  The  record  received  by  the  Christian  world  from  the  Jewish 

14 


FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY.  15 

is  understood  to  declare  that  the  first  pair  were  created  in  the  image 
of  their  Maker,  and  were  placed  in  "a  garden  which  the  Lord  God 
planted  eastward  in  Eden,  in  which  grew  every  tree  that  is  pleas 
ant  to  the  sight  and  good  for  food.  And  God  blessed  them  and 
said  unto  them  :  be  fruitful  and  multiply,  and  replenish  the  earth, 
and  subdue  it;  and  have  dominion  over  the  fish  of  the  sea,  and  over 
the  fowl  of  the  air,  and  over  every  living  thing  that  moveth  upon 
the  earth/' 

The  provision  for  life  and  happiness  was  ample.  The  state  of  the 
primal  society  was  perfect  innocence,  or,  total  ignorance  of  evil,  and 
the  only  labor  was  "to  dress  the  garden  of  Eden,  and,  to  keep  it." 
In  their  food,  they  were  restricted  to  "  herbs  bearing  seed,  and  the 
fruit  of  trees  yielding  seed,"  and,  they  were  naked.  Night  and 
day  and  the  varied  seasons  recurred,  but  they  needed  no  defenses 
against  the  vicissitudes  to  which  their  posterity  is  exposed. 

The  necessary  fecundity  of  nature  fresh  from  the  hand  of  the 
Creator,  and  the  correspondent  innocence  and  happiness  of  the  new- 
made  race  of  men  for  whom  all  things  were  prepared,  gave  the  idea 
of  the  age  of  Saturn,  the  golden  age,  to  the  Greeks  and  Romans; 
the  reign  of  the  gods  on  earth  to  the  Egyptians,  and  similar  con 
ceptions  of  a  necessary  period  of  peace  and  happiness  to  the  cos 
mogonies  of  the  other  nations  of  antiquity,  whose  mythologies  and 
philosophies  have  been  less  completely  preserved,  but  were  doubt 
less  received  as  well  authenticated. 

The  evidence,  revealed,  traditional,  and  presumptive  is  held  suffi 
cient  to  prove  that  man  appeared  upon  the  earth  after  the  mineral, 
vegetable,  and  animal  creatures  had  provided  and  furnished  it  for 
his  comfortable  residence  and  support — that,  the  race  was  first 
placed  in  the  temperate  zone,  and  that  they  there  formed  a  primi 
tive  society  wholly  unlike  those  of  all  subsequent  times. 

In  such  conditions,  it  is  obvious  that  exclusive  property  in  the 
soil  could  not  exist,  and  that  an  abundant  provision  for  the  suste 
nance  of  life  prevented  contests  of  interests,  induced  mildness  of 
manners  and  pacific  relations  among  the  parties.  While  such  a 
state  of  things  continued,  war  and  oppression  would  be  unknown, 
and  men,  women  and  children  would  live  as  one  family,  free  from 
suffering  and  care.  But  it  is  just  as  obvious  that  all  their  happiness 
would  be  mainly  that  of  the  senses  and  affections,  and  but  little 
refined  or  elevated  by  the  delights  of  intelligence. 


16  INTRODUCTORY. 

We  cannot  say  that  such  an  order  of  human  life  must  have  a 
limited  period ;  for  it  is  illogical  to  affirm  that  the  growth  of  human 
faculties,  any  more  than  the  faculties  themselves,  must  spring  from 
pain,  privation,  or  the  want  of  the  conditions  of  well-being,  for  this 
would  make  evil  necessary  to  the  existence  of  good;  but  we  know 
that  the  Edenic  period  or  golden  age  did  fail,  whatever  may  or 
might  have  been  its  distinctive  character. 

SAVAGISM. 

The  greater  part  of  modern  philosophers  have  declared  for  the 
original  savagism  of  men,  which  though  it  may  be  the  second  phase 
of  human  society  in  actual  order,  is  necessarily  the  first  in  contem 
plation  of  strictly  inductive  philosophy,  resting,  as  is  its  wont,  upon 
observation  and  experiment  exclusively,  or  upon  history,  and  stop 
ping  short  of  the  First  Cause  and  of  deductions  from  the  necessary 
truths  that  thence  proceed. 

In  this  stage  of  societary  history  the  earth  is  found  in  a  state  of 
disharmony,  and  the  elements  and  subordinate  terrestrial  beings, 
vegetable  and  animal,  in  such  resistance  to  man's  dominion  that 
life  may  be  called  a  battle  between  the  sovereign  and  his  legitimate 
subjects.  Then  "  the  ground."  as  under  a  curse,  brought  forth 
thorns  and  thistles,  the  actual  dominion  over  the  fowls  of  the  air 
and  the  beasts  of  the  field  passed  away,  and,  instead,  "  the  fear 
and  the  dread"  of  man  fell  upon  all  the  inferior  creatures  that 
surrounded  him,  and  he  became  the  destroyer  of  the  creatures  of 
which,  in  happier  conditions,  he  had  been  the  governor  and 
guardian. 

The  Edenic  harmony  of  the  race  also  gave  way  to  fratricidal 
war.  The  invasion  of  ferocious  beasts  and  the  necessity  of  seeking 
subsistence  in  the  chase,  caused  the  invention  of  destructive  weap 
ons,  which  were  as  often  employed  by  men  in  despoiling  and  destroy 
ing  each  other.  The  necessity  of  defense  and  the  means  of  effective 
aggression  led  to  the  union  of  families,  and  of  these  the  horde  was 
formed. 

The  industry  of  savage  tribes  is  confined  to  hunting,  fishing, 
gathering  the  forest  fruits  in  their  season,  and  the  fabrication  of 
arms,  offensive  and  defensive.  Internal  trade  is  extremely  limited, 
productive  industry  being  so  inconsiderable,  so  little  varied  and  so 


FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY.  17 

little  skilled,  that  nearly  every  man  is  the  fabricator  of  all  the 
commodities  which  he  uses.  Among  them  there  is  no  useful  divi 
sion  of  labor  in  adaptation  to  special  capabilities,  and,  consequently, 
no  organization  and  but  little  improvement  of  industry. 

Women  are  in  servitude.  Man,  in  right  of  larger  bones  and 
stronger  muscles,  establishes  the  law  of  the  strongest,  and  might 
becomes  right  in  all  the  institutions  of  the  tribe,  and  in  its  dealings 
with  surrounding  tribes.  In  all  questions  of  internal  order  and 
external  action,  demanding  the  combined  force  of  the  mass,  each 
has  a  voice.  A  rude  democracy  prevails  in  the  appointment  of 
rulers  and  leaders.  The  right  of  property  rests  in  actual  possession 
and  occupancy.  The  common  law  of  the  horde,  in  accordance  with 
this  fundamental  principle,  recognizes  the  right  of  gathering  the 
fruits  of  the  forest,  of  taking  wild  animals  wherever  they  are  found, 
and,  of  fishing  in  all  streams.  The  obligations  of  justice  between 
tribes  are  unknown.  They  acknowledge  no  international  law,  and 
observe  the  conditions  of  treaties  only  so  long  and  so  far  as  they 
seem  convenient  and  advantageous;  and  the  right  of  taking  the 
goods  of  other  tribes,  by  force  or  fraud,  is  as  clear  to  them  as  that 
of  hunting  in  their  forests.  A  larger  license,  or  less  restraint  of 
natural  liberty,  marks  the  institutions  of  the  savage  than  is  at  all 
compatible  with  the  system  of  civilization ;  but  there  is  less  security 
for  those  that  are  allowed,  and,  in  the  same  degree,  the  less  real 
liberty  enjoyed. 

In  the  necessary  order  of  things  the  largest  benefits  of  society 
bring  with  them  the  largest  responsibilities ;  duties  are  commensu 
rate  with  rights;  enjoyments  are  in  proportion  to  social  relations; 
and  the  greater  the  service  obtained  from  others,  the  greater  the 
reciprocities  demanded.  Social  life  is  a  system  of  exchanges ; 
wrongs  inflicted  are  echoed  in  injuries  received ;  equity  is  a  debt, 
and  benevolence  is  the  price  of  needed  kindness. 

Insecurity  of  property  is  naturally  accompanied  by  aversion  to 
productive  industry  which  necessarily  results  in  a  degraded,  igno 
rant,  and  dwarfed  existence.  The  stimulant  of  hope  in  the  future 
is  wanting  for  the  service  of  the  present,  and  there  is  no  progress. 
The  moral  nature  of  the  savage  ranges  but  little  beyond  the  animal 
instincts,  sharpened,  but  not  refined,  by  his  undeveloped  intellect, 
which  is  less  the  director  than  the  servant  of  his  passions.  His 
religion  is  a  mixture  of  fear  and  selfishness.  Having  no  father  God 


18  INTRODUCTORY. 

he  can  have  no  brother  man.  He  lacks  the  impulses  that  prompt 
to  social  amelioration,  and  his  interest  in  posterity  is  limited  to  the 
instinct  which  centres  in  his  immediate  offspring. 

The  rudimentary  forces  of  the  higher  forms  of  society  are  all 
found  in  the  savage  community,  else  the  advancement  from  the 
lowest  to  the  highest  were  impossible ;  but  they  are  overlaid  by  the 
ignorance,  indolence  and  brutality  which  characterize  it.  The  sen 
timent  of  Association  has  DO  nobler  reach  than  the  animal  passions 
prompt;  that  of  Individuality  has  no  greater  growth  than  accidental 
advantages  induce.  Social  commerce  but  little  transcends  the  gre- 
gariousness  of  the  irrational  races  in  extent  or  value;  for  where 
there  is  but  little  productive  industry  and  no  permanent  improve 
ment  of  land,  the  exchanges  of  service  must  be  small,  and  there  can 
be  no  educational  enterprise,  no  public  sentiment,  no  general  ideas 
or  interests,  no  corporate  feeling,  and,  neither  the  man  nor  the  com 
munity  can  take  the  form  which  promotes  the  highest  ends  and 
aims  of  life. 

The  analogies  of  individual  life  affirm  and  illustrate  this  general 
conception.  These  earliest  combinations  of  men  by  a  just  corre 
spondence  are  regarded  as  the  Infancy  of  human  society;  they  are 
built  upon  the  lowest,  most  common  and  earliest  developed  faculties 
of  man — upon  the  instincts  and  propensities,  with  that  modicum  of 
intelligence  which  describes  the  life  of  the  earliest  childhood.  In 
phrenological  language  the  reigning  faculties  are  acquisitiveness, 
combativeness,  secretiveness.  cautiousness,  sharpness  of  the  percep 
tive  powers;  all  trained  to  the  service  of  selfishness ;  while  the  cor 
rective  and  directing  sentiments  of  justice,  benevolence,  veneration 
and  the  higher  reason  are  yet  inactive. 

There  is  good  ground  for  believing  that  savages  are  in  some  in 
stances  degenerate  races — remnants  of  a  social  and  political  wreck. 
Our  North  American  Indians  have  lost  their  history,  but  they  pre 
serve  the  traces  of  a  much  higher  social  and  political  system  than 
they  have  shown  since  they  became  kuown  to  Europe.  It  is.  there 
fore,  only  in  relative  rank  that  they  are  here  treated  as  exhibiting 
the  first  or  earliest  stage  of  societary  organization.  We  are  not  con 
sidering  them  as  subjects  of  successive,  but  of  contemporaneous  his 
tory,  and  this  for  the  purpose  of  exhibiting  the  spirit,  the  forces, 
and  the  differences  of  societary  constitutions  from  the  simplest  to 
the  more  complex  forms. 


FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY.  19 


PATRIARCIIISM. 

This  is  the  next  societary  system  in  an  orderly  study  of  our  sub 
ject.  It  is  an  advance  upon  the  tribal  organization  and  the  economy 
of  the  savage  horde.  In  effect  it  is  an  extension  of  the  family 
polity  to  that  of  a  larger  community,  in  which  the  Chief  has  all  the 
absoluteness  of  the  father  of  a  family,  and  an  equally  energetic 
government — a  despotism,  unchecked  by  the  instinctive  tenderness 
of  immediate  parentage,  and  marked  by  such  abridgment  of  the 
subject's  liberties  as  hinders  the  development  of  the  individual  and 
the  progress  of  the  clan. 

As  a  community  svstem  it  is  circumscribed  to  a  few  favoring 
regions  of  the  earth.  The  best  known  and  in  its  best  form  is  the 
system  of  the  Israelites  previous  to  their  captivity  in  Egypt,  It  is 
of  little  importance,  and  almost  impracticable  in  modern  times.  It 
centralized  the  community  upon  the  family  model,  and  was  incapable 
of  anything  approaching  a  true  nationality.  In  Palestine,  after  the 
Egyptian  Exodus,  it  was  greatly  modified  both  in  sacerdotal  and 
political  principles  by  the  institutions  of  Moses,  The  Executive  of 
his  system  held  his  office  by  delegation,  and  not  in  right  of  inherit 
ance  until  the  monarchy  of  Saul  was  established,  which  had  arbitrary 
power  in  secular  affairs ;  the  Priesthood  being  at  the  same  time  con 
fided  to  a  single  family  of  the  nation.  In  pure  patriarchism  the 
head  of  the  tribe  is  King.  Priest,  General  and  Judge — the  type  of 
all  the  various  forms  of  despotism,  and  tending  to  all  the  tyrannies 
of  government  endured  among  men.  It  is  an  instance  of  Associa 
tion  without  the  conditions  which  favor  or  allow  Individuality,  with 
its  attendant  freedom,  responsibility  and  progressiveness,  to  any 
considerable  or  worthy  extent.  It  is,  nevertheless,  a  form  of  society 
superior  to  the  wild  liberty  of  savage  life.  It  is  a  more  effective 
association.  The  first  steps  in  social  progress  are  made  in  it.  Pro 
ductive  industry  begins ;  flocks  are  reared ;  the  simpler  branches  of 
manufacture  are  undertaken  ;  property  in  the  soil  is  recognized  to 
some  extent,  and  in  movables,  absolutely;  exchange  of  services 
and  values  is  initiated  ;  money  and  other  mediums  of  exchange 
come  into  use ;  men  become  attached  to  the  soil  which  they  now 
own,  and  they  depend  upon  settled  and  distributed  industries  for 
subsistence.  They  supply  their  wants  by  skill  and  labor,  and  no 
longer  live  exclusively  by  spoliation  of  the  forests  and  rivers. 


20  INTRODUCTORY. 

But  these  ameliorating  influences  are  too  narrowly  limited  to 
provide  for  any  considerable  advance  of  the  commonwealth.  It  is 
quite  as  apparent  in  the  history  of  the  patriarchal  system  of  the 
plains  of  Asia,  as  of  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  that  the  head  of 
the  great  family,  though  with  less  of  ferocity  than  the  savage  Chief, 
is  quite  as  perfidious  and,  in  effect,  as  despotic,  and  as  much  an 
oppressor  of  his  subjects.  His  wife  is  a  slave  and  his  children  are 
servants  fur  life;  all  women  are  either  drudges  or  dishonored  ministers 
of  their  masters'  pleasures — a  system  of  such  inequality  and  so  full 
of  mischief,  that  the  earliest  necessities  of  growing  communities 
require  its  modification.  A  single  family  of  two  or  three  generations 
may  endure  it,  but  a  considerable  population  is  safer  and  better  in 
absolute  political  and  personal  slavery  to  masters  or  monarchs. 
Egyptian  bondage,  rigorous  as  it  was,  proved  more  friendly  to  the 
welfare  of  the  Israelites  than  their  accustomed  tribal  institutions 
would  have  been  in  Mesopotamia  •  for  in  taking  care  of  the  family 
groups,  the  patriarchal  polity  had  too  little  control  of  the  federative 
unity  of  the  tribes,  and  utterly  failed  of  effecting  an  association 
comprehensive  and  free  enough  to  secure  internal  peace  or  external 
defense,  or  the  advancement  of  the  people  either  individually  or 
collectively. 

In  analogy  to  an  individual  life,  patriarchism  was  a  government 
in  its  childhood,  favorable  to  the  stage  of  development  to  which  it 
was  adapted,  but  obstructive  and  repressive  of  all  endeavor  towards 
further  advancement — an  injuriously  prolonged  minority  of  the 
subjects. 

BARBARISM. 

The  next  well-defined  stage  of  national  growth  is  a  large  stride 
in  the  social,  political,  industrial,  and  commercial  institutions  of  a 
State.  Productive  industry  in  a  <ireat  variety  of  forms  becomes  the 
occupation  of  the  mass  of  the  people;  and  the  arts  and  sciences 
receive  a  great  development.  Through  the  Middle  Ages  the  Ma- 
houiedans  of  Asia  and  the  Moors  in  Spain  gave  noble  proofs  of  the 
capabilities  and  brilliant  illustration  to  the  polity  of  Barbarism.  It 
proved  itself  capable  of  very  great  economic  success.  In  mechanic 
skill  the  nations  which  we  call  civilized  in  the  same  age,  so  far  from 
excelling  did  not  approach  them  in  excellence.  In  architecture  and 
decorative  art  they  fell  but  a  little  way  behind  Greek  and  Roman 


FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY.  21 

achievement.  In  agriculture  they  were  greatly  in  advance  of  all 
western  Europe — all  the  service  of  wealth  they  had  at  command ; 
and  in  civil  policy  and  military  achievement  they  certainly  had  no 
superiors.  Indeed,  it  is  hard  to  find  a  quality  of  personal  or  na 
tional  character  in  which  the}7  were  transcended  by  the  people  of 
the  Caucasian  race,  prior  to  the  inauguration  of  the  new  physical 
philosophy  and  its  wonder-working  application  in  arts  and  manu 
factures. 

Barbarism  retained  the  warlike  spirit  of  the  savage  system  and 
the  despotism  of  the  Patriarchal,  but  it  associated  men  more  effec 
tively  for  the  ends  of  society,  and  brought  the  progress  of  the  race 
to  the  verge  of  the  next  epoch  in  its  civil  advancement.  Its  char 
acteristics  are  most  clearly  defined  by  its  contrasts  with  civilization. 
The  chief  of  these  are  : — Its  stationary-spirit,  resulting  from  its  doc 
trine  of  fatalism  and  fanatical  theocracy;  its  directness  and  prompt 
itude  of  distributive  justice,  springing  from  the  free  action  of  the 
passions  and  the  simplicity  of  its  political  forms.  Civilization  in 
these  respects  being  marked  by  its  unlimited  progressiveness,  result 
ing  from  its  confidence  in  the  dominion  of  natural  laws  over  the 
elements  and  forces  of  matter,  and,  by  the  logical  structure  of  its 
religious  beliefs.  Its  political  institutions  have  a  flexibility  and  a 
conformity  to  the  exigencies  of  the  times  and  to  changes  of  inter 
national  relations,  of  which  Barbarism  is  entirely  incapable ;  and  its 
jurisprudence  is  rendered  circuitous  by  its  respect  for  individual 
rights,  by  publicity  of  procedure,  and  by  responsibility  of  its  official 
ministers. 

Differences  of  societary  constitutions  may  be  traced  to  their  roots 
in  corresponding  differences  of  mental  qualities,  and  the  reflex  in 
fluence  of  institutions  upon  national  character  may  be  allowed ; 
but  with  these  questions  we  are  not  now  concerned,  we  are  only 
endeavoring  distinctive  definitions  by  arraying  the  actual  contrasts 
between  the  respective  systems  which  we  are  considering.  Beside 
those  already  indicated  others  are  noteworthy.  They  may  be  seen 
sufficiently  for  all  that  they  suggest  in  the  following  tabular  array  : — 


22  INTRODUCTORY. 

IN   BARBARISM.  I>*    CIVILIZATION. 

Ecclesiastical  absoluteness,  governing  )        An  appeal  to  reason  admitted  in  the 
by  divine  right.  '    interpretation  of  revealed  truth. 

Literature,  impassioned  and  iinagina- 


Literature,  logical  and  philosophical, 
live. 

Opinion  fixed.  }•  Opinion  free. 

Doctrine  indisputable.  [-  Doctrine  variable. 

Parental   and   marital  rights,    abso-  )  Parental       and       marital       rights, 

lute.  '  limited. 

)        Women   and   children    guarded    by 
Women  and  children  enslaved.  J    municipal  law. 

These  contrasts  so  rugged  and  bold  in  abstract  statement  are, 
however,  much  modified  in  effect,  by  the  fact,  which  must  be  con 
ceded,  that  the  larger  and  better  guarantied  liberties  of  civilization 
under  the  rule  of  public  opinion  and  official  responsibility  are  much 
weakened  by  the  substitution  of  fraud  for  force,  the  cunning  of  the 
fox  for  the  boldness  of  the  lion,  wherever  right  is  to  be  overborne, 
or  wrong  inflicted  or  defended. 

Notwithstanding  all  the  evasions  of  right,  the  illusions  of  hope, 
disappointments  of  trust,  and  the  various  oppressions  of  the  more 
advanced  forms  of  free  government,  the  difference  of  operation  upon 
private  interests  and  on  the  destiny  of  the  commonwealth,  is  very 
greatly  in  favor  of  civilized  institutions.  They  still  preserve  the 
tendency  to  diffuse  their  benefits  among  the  masses  of  the  people, 
elevating  the  community  as  a  whole,  and  giving  a  massiveness,  sta 
bility,  and  aggregate  value  and  force  to  the  better  order  to  which 
Barbarism  can  never  by  any  possibility  attain.  Civilization  has  all 
that  is  possible  of  human  welfare  in  its  prospect.  Barbarism  is 
limited  by  its  incapacity  of  change  or  growth,  and  is  unfitted  for 
the  command  of  that  infinite  power  of  association  which  a  perfect 
development  of  individuality  secure^s. 

We  have  indicated  or  intimated  a  certain  correspondence  of  char 
acteristics  between  the  societary  phases  of  the  human  race  or  races, 
and  the  marked  stages  in  the  life  and  growth  of  an  individual. 
There  must  be  such  analogies  if  each  man  is  a  representative  of 
the  race,  and  the  collective  race  is  but  a  comprehensive  abstract  of 
the  individual  man.  ^We  do  not,  however,  mean  to  affirm  that  the 
several  kinds  of  societies  flow  or  grow  into  each  other  as  the  suc 
cessive  stages  of  an  individual  life  do,  for  it  is  not  proved  that  the 


FORMATION    OP    SOCIETY.  23 

"varieties"  of  mankind  are  capable  of  such  transition  or  develop 
ment  from  the  savage  or  patriarchal,  or  even  from  the  barbarian, 
into  the  advanced  form  of  that  which  we  call  the  maturest  state, 
such  as  civilization  assumes,  with  its  capability  of  indefinite  pro 
gression.  We  mean  only  that  there  is  an  analogy  or  representative 
image  of  the  one  in  the  other.  The  reader  will  have  noticed  an  ana 
lytic  parallelism  shown  in  the  savage  and  individual  infant.  Fol 
lowing  this  thought,  we  have  spoken  of  patriarchism  as  the  analogue 
of  childhood,  or  the  period  between  the  seventh  and  fourteenth 
year  of  individual  life.  Let  us  look  for  the  correspondence :  Child 
hood  is  distinguished  from  the  next  succeeding,  as  from  the  im 
mediately  preceding  stage,  by  its  facility  of  faith,  its  docility  under 
authority,  the  dedication  of  its  endeavors  to  preparation  for  action, 
and  its  incapability  of  any  effective  agency  in  the  world's  work. 
It  is  dreamy  and  inefficient.  It  has  not  reached  the  productive 
period  in  the  useful  arts.  It  has  few  or  no  social  relations — no 
place  in  the  world's  life.  It  has  not  the  impulse  of  self-assertion, 
nor  has  it  caught  the  spirit  of  propagandism.  Its  period  is  marked 
by  growth  without  corresponding  increase  of  strength.  It  is  a 
state  of  accumulation  without  responsive  action.  It  has  affection 
without  friendship;  culture  without  influence;  crude,  incoherent 
acquirement,  without  recognized  ends  or  fixed  aims.  Its  acquire 
ments  are  only  a  stock  of  possibilities,  which  the  age  in  advance 
must  draw  out  and  actualize.  Is  not  this  picture,  if  drawn  at 
length,  a  reflex  of  the  patriarchal  polity,  with  which  we  are  best 
acquainted  ?  The  childhood  of  Israel  found  the  refuge  of  its  fee 
bleness,  and  was  nursed  into  strength,  in  barbaric  bondage.  The 
oracles  committed  to  their  custody  received  their  interpretation  and 
realization  in  the  system  which  supplanted  theirs.  The  patriarchal 
got  its  evolution  first  under  the  institutions  of  Egypt,  and  eventu 
ally  from  the  Gentile  nations, .whose  conditions,  at  the  era  of  the 
earliest  practical  realization,  were  in  the  state  which  we  call  bar 
barism,  and  by  analogy,  the  youth  of  the  race. 

Barbarism  fitly  answers  to  the  analogous  period  of  youth  or  adoles 
cence,  which  is  usually  bounded  by  the  fourteenth  and  twenty-fifth 
years  of  the  individual.  It  is  the  age  of  chivalry,  enthusiasm,  undoubt- 
ing  faith  in  its  destiny,  recklessness  of  risk  and  ardent  devotedness  to 
vague  and  unlimited  enterprise.  It  is  impatient  and  discontented 
with  its  inheritance ;  it  demands  a  new  world  for  its  fresh  new  life. 


24  INTRODUCTORY. 

Routine  is  as  repulsive  as  imprisonment,  and  it  forces  circumstances 
with  an  industry  that  employs  muscle  more  than  mind,  and  is  led 
by  fancy  rather  than  philosophy;  it  would  achieve  all  that  it 
imagines,  and  dreams  that  there  is  nothing  beyond  its  compass— an 
insanity  of  aspiration  barely  checked  in  manifestation  by  the  des 
potic  authority  of  manners  and  opinion ;  the  fates  are  its  gods ;  it 
is  passionate,  peremptory,  pitiless ;  its  fortunes  are  predestinated, 
and  it  gives  circumspection  to  the  winds. 

Are  there  not  parallel  points  here  to  the  history  of  Ancient 
Egypt  and  Middle-age  Arabia  ?  The  vigor  and  fire,  aye,  the  fine 
frenzy  of  youth  glows  in  all  their  doings  and  darings,  and  their 
monuments,  of  all  kinds,  tangible,  historical,  traditional  and  fabu 
lous,  are  all  alike  poetical. 

In  fine  contrast  with  the  youthlike  impetuosity  of  barbarism, 
with  its  quick  activity  of  imagination,  exaggerated  self-confidence, 
irreflective  courage  and  passionate  love  of  glory,  we  have  the  sobered 
thoughtfulness  of  manhood  in  advanced  civilization,  the  circum 
spection  that  comes  with  experience,  and  the  rigorous  logic  that 
law  has  impressed  by  its  penalties  upon  willfulness ;  the  warring 
spirit  of  enthusiasm  is  replaced  by  the  serene  masterdom  of  mind 
adjusted  to  the  conditions  of  its  subjects,  and  executive  wisdom 
evades  resistance  and,  by  administrative  address,  secures  success. 
Youth  is  in  rebellion  against  the  past;  manhood  makes  experience 
its  minister;  and  the  issues  register  the  unlike  results.  Barbarism 
ultimates  itself  in  its  achievements;  its  monuments  are  its  bounda 
ries,  "the  butt  and  sea-mark  of  its  utmost  sail;"  its  triumphs  stand 
for  its  tombstones.  But  the  highest  attainments  of  civilization  are 
fresh  points  of  departure  to  higher  and  greater  things  beyond  ;  they 
are  only  the  scaffoldings  of  the  edifice  it  rears,  and  every  structure 
it  erects  for  its  service  is  also  an  observatory  for  a  wider  scope  of 
aims  and  efforts.  The  works  of  barbarism,  like  the  system,  are 
arrested  at  the  stage  of  success,  and  stand  still  in  a  completeness  of 
fulfillment,  which  civilization  never  meets  or  confesses.  The  one 
declares  its  plan  accomplished,  the  other  indicates  its  own  perpetuity. 

NOTE. — Comte,  author  of  the  "  Positive  Philosophy,"  remarks,  that  every 
thoroughly  developed  individual  passes  through  three  mental  stages :  First, 
religious  ;  second,  theoretical  or  hypothetical ;  third,  matter-of-fact  or  practical ; 
and  that  nations  have  the  same  tendency,  that  is,  a  thoroughly  developed  race  or 
family  of  men  has  a  growth  through  corresponding  phases.  The  theory  whioh 


FORMATION    OF    SOCIETY.  25 

this  acute  observer  of  facts  deduces  from  these  propositions  is  not  by  any  means 
sustained,  but  the  facts  are  sound.  They  apply  happily  to  the  respective  ages  of 
Childhood,  Youth  and  Mature  Manhood,  and  the  characteristics  he  assigns  to 
them  may  be  thus  translated  in  our  use  of  them  :  for  "  religious  "  read  faith  and 
obedience;  for  "hypothetical"  read  speculative,  adventurous,  enthusiastic; 
"  matter-of-fact "  may  stand  as  serving  sufficiently  well  for  our  apprehension  of 
the  soberly  philosophical  mood  of  the  matured  mind  and  method  of  advanced 
manhood;  and,  let  it  be  noted,  that  only  those  nations  who  have  actually  entered 
upon  the  last  stages  are  proved  capable  of  rising  through  and  over-passing  the 
previous  grades.  The  students  of  Ethnology  can  have  no  difficulty  in  applying 
this  theory  to  the  diverse  nationalities  in  history. 

Comte's  scale  of  progressive  development  has  met  an  universal  acceptance,  and 
has  had  the  influence  to  carry  with  it,  besides,  his  illogical  deduction  that  the 
mind  upon  entering  each  new  stage  throws  off  the  preceding — that  the  stage  of 
the  hypothetical  discards  that  of  faith,  and  is  itself  in  turn  rejected  in  the  last, 
the  matter-of-fact  or  philosophical  state.  This  is  decidedly  unphilosophical  in 
theory,  as  it  is  untrue  in  fact.  Faith,  speculation  and  fact,  if  they  all  have,  or 
find,  or  hold  the  truth,  harmonize,  focalize,  and  persist  in  the  issue  that  realizes 
them. 

3 


CHAPTER    III. 

CIVILIZATION. 

Civilization,  barbarism  and  savagism  geographically  distributed. — Only  the  Euro 
pean  families  have  passed  through  all  the  stages  of  societary  growth.— No 
instance  or  sign  of  decadence  in  them. — Asiatic  communities  culminate  in  bar 
barism. — Nations  on  the  borders  of  Asia  only  are  stationary. — Africans  are  not 
a  decaying  race;  they  cannot  be  classed  with  the  American  Indians. — Their 
character  in  the  United  States. — Not  to  be  judged  by  our  present  standards  of 
capability  and  fitness  for  the  world's  uses. — African  race  resembles  European 
women. — The  future  must  solve  the  problem  of  their  societary  relations. — Civil 
ization  elastic  and  composite. — Its  late  development. — India  in  advance  of 
England  in  the  fourteenth  century. — The  Moors  superior  to  the  Spaniards  in  the 
fifteenth  century. — The  Dark  Ages  in  Europe. — Monarchy  introduced  order  and 
initiated  progress  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. — Intellectual  and  re 
ligious  revolutions  of  the  fifteenth  century. — The  age  of  the  nascent  industries, 
geographical  discoveries,  and  the  inauguration  of  man  in  the  dominion  of  matter. 
— Progress  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries. — The  great  career  of  the 
race  carried  forward  by  the  people  of  European  Origin. — Co-operative  unity 
of  diverse  races. — Vicious  generalities  of  the  prevalent  theory  of  Political  Econ 
omy. — No  single  kindred  is  cosmopolitan. — The  whole  history  of  civilization  is 
its  only  adequate  definition. 

CIVILIZATION  connects  itself  historically  with  certain  races  of 
men,  and  is  limited  by  geographical  lines.  In  general  statement  it 
may  be  called  the  European  form  of  societary  life  ;  as  in  like  general 
terms  Asia  is  barbaric,  and  Africa,  for  the  want  of  any  more  exact 
term,  may  be  classed  as  savage.  These  are  the  social,  economic  and 
political  distinctions  of  those  three  portions  of  the  globe  in  modern 
times ;  and  in  America  civilization  is  found  in  different  degrees  of 
maturity,  only  in  that  portion  of  the  continent  which  is  occupied  by 
European  Colonists.  Neither  Asia  nor  Africa  has  organized  a 
civilized  government  at  home,  nor  formed  one  abroad  within  the 
reach  of  authentic  history.  If  the  Asiatic  or  African  border  of  the 
Mediterranean  Sea  gave  to  Europe  its  superior  races,  they  were 
exceptional  peoples,  and  belonged  to  Europe  by  constitutional  char- 
2fl 


CIVILIZATION.  27 

acters,  as  nearly  as  their  geographic  origin  bordered  upon  the 
territory  which  they  were  destined  to  occupy  and  illustrate ;  and 
none  of  the  regions  that  lay  beyond  them  have  shown  any  similar 
capabilities  since  the  earliest  known  localities  of  the  tribes  of  men. 
Moreover,  it  is  of  the  European  people  only  that  it  can  be  affirmed, 
with  the  assurance  which  experience  affords,  that  they  are  capable 
of  passing  through  all  the  stages  from  savage  to  civilized  conditions, 
and  who  give  indications  of  a  progress  in  institutions  and  attainments 
without  assignable  limits  in  the  future.  Besides,  none  of  the  fami 
lies  or  kindreds  of  Europe  have  ever  yet  shown  any  of  the  signs  of 
declension  which  threaten  the  catastrophe  that  has  already  settled  the 
fate  of  Asiatic  and  Egyptian  nations,  and  of  the  aborigines  of  North 
and  South  America.  No  people  found  from  the  Mediterranean  Sea  to 
Scandinavia,  or  between  the  Ural  Mountains  and  the  North  Atlantic 
Ocean,  have  within  the  range  of  history  retrograded  toward  extinc 
tion.  These  people,  whether  German  or  Celtic,  in  Southern  or 
Western  Europe  in  time  past,  and  now  before  our  eyes,  in  the  North 
and  East,  are  demonstrating  their  capability  of  growth  and  culture 
into  the  highest  style  of  human  development.  While,  in  marked 
contrast,  Asiatic  communities  seem  to  culminate  in  barbarism,  and 
are  there  arrested  or  thence  decline,  as  if  their  constitutional 
maturity  were  reached  at  periods  corresponding  to  the  childhood  or 
youth  of  the  nations  that  now  rule  the  world.  Europe  has  emerged 
into  civilization,  settled  America,  and  conquered  whatever  she 
desired  of  Asia,  while  the  countries  in  which  power  and  glory  had 
their  earliest  sway  have  been  retrograding,  absolutely  as  well  as 
relatively,  from  the  time  that  the  western  mind  seized  the  dominion 
of  matter  and  undertook  the  destiny  of  the  world. 

A  growth  of  the  families  of  men  corresponding  to  the  epochs  of 
individual  life,  and  a  decay  like  its  decline  toward  extinction  or 
death,  has  happened,  and  is  threatened  to  the  peoples  which  we 
style  barbaric ;  but  none  of  the  European  nations  have  perished ; 
none  of  them  are  in  the  category  of  the  dying.  History  has  not 
set  up  the  tombstone  of  a  single  branch  of  the  Germanic  or  Celtic 
families,  and  the  analogy  has  no  true  application  to  them.  It  is 
worth  noting  in  connection  with  this  fact,  that  the  only  members  of 
this  great  kindred,  ascertained  by  geographic  boundaries,  which  are 
now  unprogressive,  are  those  that  lie  nearest  to  stationary  Asia  and 
unenlightened  Africa;  Spain,  Italy  and  Greece,  are  borderers  of 


28  INTRODUCTORY. 

the  sea  that  separates  the  ancient  from  the  modern  world  of  human 
supremacy. 

The  people  of  Middle  and  Southern  Africa  are  ranked  as  savages 
for  want  of  a  more  sharply  defined  classification.  But  they  do  not 
resemble  our  American  Indians  in  anything  but  inferiority  to  the 
foremost  of  the  races.  The  latter  are  incapable  of  improved  condi 
tions.  They  are  a  dying  people.  The  former  have  not  yet  shown 
any  capability  of  self-development.  In  their  native  country  they 
are  without  literature,  science,  and  the  fine  and  useful  arts.  They 
have  organized  no  governments;  they  have  no  commerce,  and  they 
have  no  religion  that  can  improve  their  life;  but  they  have  the 
physical  health,  simplicity,  docility,  and  joyousness  of  childhood,  and 
they  show  no  signs  of  decay.  Under  circumstances  the  most  un 
favorable  for  any  other  people,  they  have  improved  among  us  to  the 
utmost  limit  of  their  opportunity,  and  in  the  most  tempting  situa 
tions  they  have  exhibited  the  kindliest  qualities  of  character. 
Through  the  whole  period  of  servitude,  through  the  great  American 
rebellion,  and  since,  they  have  disappointed  every  unfavorable  pro 
phecy  of  their  conduct  in  their  changed  relations  to  society,  and 
have  as  much  surpassed  the  hopes  of  the  most  sanguine  philanthro 
pists.  We  do  not  know  this  people;  we  have  never  known  them. 
We  cannot  know  them  while  we  judge  them  by  our  standard,  and 
hold  that  standard  to  be  unchangeable  for  the  future  that  probably 
lies  generations  in  advance  of  us.  Just  as  reason  and  experience 
find  essential  differences  in  the  respective  histories  and  destinies  of 
the  civilized  and  barbaric  races,  so  we  may  suspect  that  the  African 
is  not  measurable  by  the  character  and  functions  of  the  European. 
If  they  should  after  fair  trial  be  found  to  be  specifically  different  in 
the  kind  of  mental  power  that  is  mastering  the  material  conditions 
of  terrestrial  life,  may  they  not  have  some  other  modification  of 
mind  not  incompatible  or  incongruous,  but  helpful  to  the  work  of 
the  world  ?  Childhood  and  youth  co-exist  with  and  even  corrobo 
rate  maturity.  The  feminine  mind  and  character  are  quite  as 
broadly  different  from  the  masculine.  These  people  in  the  mass 
more  strongly  resemble  European  women  than  they  do  the  men  of 
any  other  race,  and  they  may  weave  into  the  web  of  social  life  well 
enough  to  vary  and  thus  enrich  it.  Our  judgment  to  be  just  and 
wise  must  wait  for  the  facts — wait  till  we  know  what  the  future 
shall  require  of  them  and  ourselves,  and  how  they  and  we  may 


CIVILIZATION.  29 

answer  the  requirement.  We  know,  a  priori,  that  the  noblest  or 
ganisms  are  those  which  have  the  most  numerous  and  most  vari 
ously  endowed  constituents,  and  that  the  greatest  possible  diversity 
is  compatible  with  peace  and  unity — that  the  limestone  in  our  bones 
is  organized  into  harmony  of  use  with  the  finest  nerves  of  sense  and 
the  highest  organs  of  mind.  The  present  dominant  race  of  men 
live  and  move  and  have  all  their  resources  of  power  in  the  inductive 
philosophy.  In  this  matter  their  own  system  binds  them  to  wait  for 
experiment  and  observation  to  supply  the  data  of  their  reasonings. 

We  had  no  instance  of  a  nation  born  in  a  day — of  a  people  en 
franchised  at  a  blow.  We  could  not  believe  it  possible  ;  above  all, 
we  could  not  believe  them  capable.  Henry  the  Eighth  hanged 
seventy  thousand  new-made  freedmen  of  our  own  race  and  kindred 
during  his  reign.  Political  liberty  seems  impossible  to  Mexico  after 
fifty  years  of  discipline  in  freedom.  France  has  gone  back  from 
Republicanism  to  Monarchy,  and  from  Monarchy  to  chaos  with  such 
portentous  facility  that  her  varied  examples  taught  us  no  hope  of 
sudden  adaptation  to  higher  forms  of  social  and  civil  life ;  Greece 
and  Rome  have  declined  for  centuries  in  face  of  surrounding  en 
lightenment  and  progress ;  and  the  precedents  were  contrary  to  the 
hope.  History  warranted  our  fears  and  suggested  the  preparation 
of  gradualism — preparation  for  liberty,  but  forbade  the  trial  in 
liberty.  Yet,  it  is  done;  done  so  far  safely,  and  so  far  as  done, 
wonderfully.  But  is  the  trial  yet  over  ?  Or,  is  it  only  in  our  coun 
try  and  in  our  age  that  the  habit  of  history  can  be  broken  !  There 
must  be  something  in  this,  for  the  immigrants  from  all  Europe,  in 
capable  of  political  liberty  at  home,  immediately  become  sovereigns 
here.  The  negro  may  in  a  generation  become  an  American  citizen 
complete;  for  it  seems  that  anything,  that  is,  any  next  thing,  is 
possible  to  us. 

There  must  be  truth  in  experience,  for  it  is  facts  accomplished ; 
but  experience  is  not  always  directory.  We  never  fully  understand 
the  present  till  it  is  past;  till  other  experience  interprets  it;  till 
we  see  it  on  all  sides  and  to  the  core  of  its  meaning.  A  great 
thing,  surprisingly  accomplished,  never  allows  of  any  future  thing 
which  shall  surpass  it  or  destroy  its  value.  This  is  the  reason  that 
all  the  new  we  have  now  was  the  impossible  of  the  past;  yet  it  is 
the  character  of  this  age  of  wonder-working  to  gain  assurance  of 
greater,  from  even  the  most  astonishing  present,  success;  and  we 


30  INTRODUCTORY. 

are  not  discouragingly  doubtful,  however  reluctant  to  undertake  the 
fusion  and  reconciliation  of  all  the  immigrant  races.  We  begin  to 
believe  that  we  can,  in  the  United  States  unite,  conciliate  and 
organize  the  differences  of  the  wide  world. 

It  is  apparent  in  the  institutions  and  in  the  intrinsic  qualities  of 
savagism,  patriarchism,  and  barbarism,  that  neither  of  them,  nor 
any  mixture  of  them,  can  accomplish  the  social  destiny  of  man ; 
but  civilization,  retaining  whatever  is  available  in  them,  and  adding 
what  it  has  of  its  own — as  human  nature,  by  reproducing  all  that  is 
excellent  of  the  inferior  orders  of  animal  life  and  superadding  its 
own  distinctive  powers — provides  for  its  predominant  agencies  and 
achievements.  This  analogy  is  worthy  of  attention  for  the  support 
it  gains  from  the  unity  of  nature's  plan  of  the  government  of  all 
the  forms  of  related  existence  in  their  several  contributions  to  the 
chief  and  highest  designs  of  the  terrestrial  system;  rank  and  right 
of  rule  being  graded  by  the  character  and  number  of  the  powers 
possessed,  and  by  the  dignity  and  worth  of  the  offices  to  be  filled 
and  of  the  ends  to  be  attained. 

In  the  earlier  stages  of  civilized  societies  they  compared  unfavora 
bly  with  the  barbaric  states  of  the  higher  grades,  as  infancy  is  in 
ferior  to  even  a  mediocre  maturity.  India  was  considerably  in 
advance  of  England,  even  so  lately  as  in  the  fourteenth  century,  in 
all  that  constitutes  the  well-being  of  a  people — in  industry,  arts, 
and  domestic  and  foreign  policy ;  and  the  Moors  were  the  superiors 
of  the  Spaniards  for  at  least  two  centuries  of  the  time  which  they 
held  possession  of  Middle  and  Southern  Spain.  The  courts  of  Cor 
dova  and  Granada  were  the  most  splendid  and  polished  in  Europe 
from  early  in  the  thirteenth  to  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  centu 
ries.  Indeed,  the  dark  ages  of  Christendom  were  resplendent  with 
the  arts,  arms,  learning  and  science  of  barbaric  Arabia,  Persia, 
India  and  those  European  countries  that  were  conquered  and  occu 
pied  by  the  Mohammedans.  From  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Em 
pire  the  ensuing  six  centuries  of  the  history  of  the  races  which 
now  hold  the  mastery  of  the  world,  were  marked  by  ignorance, 
superstition,  vice,  lawlessness,  poverty,  and  weakness. 

It  was  not  until  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  that  Eng 
land  fairly  entered  upon  her  career  of  manufacturing  industry, 
although  Flanders  and  Toulouse  had  made  a  promising  beginning 
nearly  two  hundred  years  before.  Previously,  throughout  Christian 


CIVILIZATION.  31 

Europe  feudalism,  which  is  a  near  approach  to  the  barbaric  polity 
of  Asia,  was  the  prevailing  form  of  social  and  political  life. 

It  was  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth^  centuries  that  monarchy 
centralized  and  organized  efficient  governments  among  them  j  under 
the  Tudors  in  England,  and  the  house  of  Yaloisin  France;  in  Ger 
many,  under  the  elective  Emperors.  In  Sweden,  Holland,  and 
Hungary  a  like  improving  change  occurred,  and  Spain  and  Por 
tugal  had  fairly  put  themselves  in  the  front  of  the  age. 

The  fifteenth  century  was  the  period  in  which  states  and  nations 
were  firmly  established  upon  the  ruins  of  feudalism,  and  of  the 
municipal  republics  which  had  failed  to  organize  society  upon 
principles  which  could  secure  general  progress  and  prosperity.  It 
was  the  age  of  intellectual  and  religious  revolution,  of  great 
physical  activity,  travels,  discoveries,  and  labor-saving  and  space- 
conquering  inventions,  such  as  the  passage  to  India  round  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope,  the  discovery  of  America,  the  invention  of  printing, 
and  hosts  of  cognate  forces  that  inaugurated  the  modern  dominion 
of  men  over  their  material  conditions.  The  sixteenth  and  seven 
teenth  centuries  carried  all  these  enterprises  forward  rapidly  toward 
maturity,  and  left  the  eighteenth  rich  in  accumulations  of  power 
acquired,  and  that  knowledge  which  is  the  source  of  all  attainable 
power.  It  was  ready  to  replace  the  monarchical  institutions  which 
it  inherited  by  representative  governments,  more  or  less  bene 
ficial,  by  responsible  magistrates,  enlightened  liberty,  freedom  of 
thought,  and  through  these,  a  grand  advance  in  the  mastery  of  the 
elements  and  forces  of  matter,  with  a  prospect  so  much  grander 
than  all  actual  achievement,  that  the  present  age  feels  as  if  it  were 
but  entering  upon  the  great  career  of  humanity.  In  all  that  has 
been  accomplished — the  work  of  three  or  four  hundred  years — the 
people  of  European  origin  have  had  the  exclusive  agency,  and  they 
are  thus  distinguished  from  the  races  and  nations  whose  careers 
have  been  run  or  are  now  running  to  their  close. 

All  these  considerations  concerning  the  distinctive  characters  of 
the  four  or  five  varieties  of  political  and  social  polities  of  human 
societies,  and  of  the  kindreds  and  peoples  under  them,  are  produced 
here,  as  well  as  for  other  purposes,  to  show  that  the  unity  of  the 
families  of  man  is  not  the  unity  of  likeness  or  identity,  but  of  diver 
sity  and  its  possible  harmonies  in  that  better  order,  of  which  they 
are  capable,  than  any  known  in  the  past  or  the  present. 


32  INTRODUCTORY. 

The  study  of  Political  Economy  has  suffered  more  from  a  vicious 
system  of  generalization  than  from  any  other  or  all  other  errors  of 
fact  and  opinion.  The  various  races  of  men,  whatever  may  have 
been  their  origin,  or  whatever  the  causes  of  those  differences  of 
character,  use  and  destiny  which  now  exist  among  them,  cannot  be 
confounded  in  a  single  class,  or  covered  with  a  common  description 
without  sacrificing  all  the  benefits  of  philosophic  study,  and  all  the 
useful  guides  of  practical  treatment;  and,  in  keeping  with  this  fact, 
is  the  corresponding  one,  that  while  all  the  families  of  men,  in  the 
aggregate,  or  in  one  category,  may  be  called  cosmopolitan,  and 
destined  in  their  adjusted  varieties  to  the  inhabitation  of  the  whole 
earth,  no  single  kindred  or  people  are  or  can  be  so,  but  under  a 
distributive  impulse,  each  grand  class  has  its  own  assigned  locality 
with  specially  fitting  conditions  and  a  special  fitness  for  them. 

We  are  not  yet  prepared  for  a  summary  or  complete  statement  of 
the  characteristics  of  civilization.  They  can  be  given  only  in  the 
details  which  are  the  history  and  the  prospects  of  its  service  in  the 
world's  advancement.  Upon  these  we  shall  enter  after  some  further 
preliminaries  are  disposed  of. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

MIGRATION    AND    OCCUPATION    OF   THE    EARTH. 

Of  Migration,  and  of  the  Occupation  of  the  Earth :  The  habitats  of  men1 
ruled  by  their  natal  peculiarities. — Colonization  limited  by  isothermal  lines  or 
zones;  Historic  illustrations. — Climatic  law  of  migration  in  the  United  States. — 
Negro  population  accommodated  to  change  of  temperature  by  change  of  occu 
pation. — The  march  of  science,  literature  and  religions  guided  by  climatic 
law. — The  doctrine  of  descent  from  a  single  pair  of  progenitors  not  involved  in 
the  question. — The  harmonies  of  a  natural  distribution  of  the  races  secured. — 
Special  appetencies  determine  the  destinies  of  the  races. — Federal  unions 
accommodate  and  preserve  specialties  in  progressive  consummation. — The 
United  States  a  model,  and  a  prophecy  of  normal  free  confederations  else 
where. — Three  climatic  zones  of  the  United  States. — Their  boundaries. — This 
law  must  rule  the  future  permanent  unions  of  States  and  Kingdoms. 

IT  is  the  custom  of  writers,  especially  of  moralists  and  theologians 
to  speak  of  man  as  cosmopolitan ;  that  he  is  so  much  less  affected 
by  climate  than  plants  and  the  inferior  animals  that  he  is  almost 
independent  of  the  meteorological  conditions  of  his  habitation  on  the 
earth.  This  notion  needs  correction.  The  species,  or  collective 
mankind,  is  adapted  to  all  climates ;  but  the  varieties  or  races  are 
governed  by  their  natal  habitudes  in  their  fitness  for  and  choice  of 
permanent  location.  Artificial  defenses  against  vicissitudes  of  tem 
perature,  and  a  considerable  constitutional  power  of  accommodation, 
enable  the  enterprising  men  of  trade  and  travel  to  avoid  the  worst 
and  most  immediate  consequences  of  a  change  of  atmospheric  con 
ditions.  The  spirit  of  commerce  and  of  conquest  carry  men  all  over 
the  world,  and  across  the  zones ;  but  colonization  follows  accustomed 
temperatures.  The  barbarous  invaders  of  Rome  came  down  upon 
Italy  from  the  north,  northeast  and  northwest,  traversing  perhaps 
five  degrees  of  latitude,  into  a  more  genial  region ;  but  they  retired, 
after  a  temporary  sojourn,  to  their  native  climates.  The  Saxons 
could  permanently  inhabit  England,  for  their  native  land  lay  in  the 
same  latitude ;  and  the  Normans  had  only  to  cross  the  English  chan- 

33 


34  INTRODUCTORY.          * 

nel  to  change  their  residence  without  an  important  change  of  the 
climatic  conditions  to  which  they  had  been  accustomed. 

That  a  law  of  climate  rules  the  migration  and  colonization  of  the 
natives  of  the  diverse  regions  of  the  earth  is  abundantly  proved  by 
ancient  and  modern  history.  We  cannot  here  cover  the  whole 
ground  in  detail,  but  a  comparatively  few  instances  are  conclusive. 
The  reader  can  readily  fill  up  the  outlines  which  we  give  with  the 
proofs  that  offer  themselves.  His  attention  is  invited  to  such  as 
the  following : — 

The  Mohammedan  conquests  in  the  east  were  in  the  line  of  tem 
perature  that  corresponds  to  that  of  Medina  from  Arabia  through 
Persia  into  India ;  and  their  western  progress  upon  the  south  shore 
of  the  Mediterranean,  and  their  occupancy  of  Southern  Spain  fall 
within  the  same  isothermal  lines.  Mexico  lies  in  the  same  belt  of 
temperature  with  Spain,  and  Cuba  touches  its  southern  border. 
European  conquests  of  countries  outside  of  their  own  zones  of  cli 
mate  are  no  exceptions  to  the  law.  Rome  when  she  held  the  world 
in  subjection  inhabited  Italy  only.  Military  posts  and  governmental 
agents  were  all  that  constituted  her  presence  in  regions  lying  north 
or  south  of  her.  In  this,  England  and  France  resemble  the  ancient 
mistress  of  universal  Europe.  They  hold  all  their  foreign  provinces 
of  unlike  climates  by  their  armies  of  occupation  and  officers  of  civil 
administration.  There  were  not  so  many  as  fifty  thousand  white 
persons  in  the  British  West  India  Islands  when  the  colored  popula 
tion  amounted  to  eight  hundred  thousand.  In  1861  the  population 
of  East  India  was  variously  estimated  at  from  one  hundred  and 
thirty-five  to  two  hundred  millions,  while  the  English  people  there 
amounted  to  only  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  nine  hun 
dred  and  forty-five  persons,  of  whom  eighty-four  thousand  and  eighty- 
three  went  to  compose  the  British  officers  and  men  of  the  Indian 
army,  and  twenty-two  thousand  five  hundred  and  fifty-six  consisted 
of  men  and  boys  in  the  civil  service,  the  whole  remainder  (nineteen 
thousand  three  hundred  and  six)  being  females. 

This  law  is  found  to  rule  in  the  colonies  or  provinces  of  all  the 
European  nations  who  have  any  foreign  possessions  lying  consider 
ably  north  or  south  of  their  own  line  of  mean  annual  temperature. 
But  the  most  remarkable  exemplification  is  found  in  the  settlement 
of  the  United  States,  whose  territory,  already  occupied,  embraces 
twenty-three  degrees  of  latitude,  and  by  its  great  variety  of  tern- 


OCCUPATION    OF    THE    EARTH.  35 

perature  may  be  divided  into  three  climatic  zones.  In  these  States 
there  has  long  been  a  constant  emigration  from  the  east  or  Atlantic 
coast  toward  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  recently  to  the  Pacific  Ocean 
coast.  These  emigrants  are  American  born  and  have  unlimited 
liberty  of  choice  as  to  their  place  of  settlement  upon  the  new  lands 
of  the  West.  Beside  these,  there  is  an  immense  influx  of  foreigners 
mainly  from  Western  Europe,  who  are  equally  free  to  choose  their 
places  of  habitation.  Every  tenth  year  a  census  of  the  resident 
population  is  taken,  and  their  nativities  are  ascertained  and  noted. 
These  returns  give  us  these  surprising  results  :  Only  one  of  every 
fourteen  persons  is  found  resident  out  of  the  belt  or  zone  of  their 
native  temperature,  whether  born  in  Europe  or  in  the  Eastern 
States  of  the  Union.  That  which  seems  to  contradict  or  to  be  an 
exception  to  the  law,  is  the  presence  and  prosperous  condition  of 
the  African  negroes  in  the  semi-tropical  States  devoted  to  the  cul 
tivation  of  cotton  and  rice,  whose  mean  annual  temperature  is,  say, 
fifteen  or  twenty  degrees  of  Fahrenheit  lower  than  that  of  their 
primitive  African  birthplace,  and  at  the  same  time  fifteen  degrees 
above  that  of  England,  and  ten  above  the  south  of  France.  How 
are  these  people  adjusted  to  the  difference  from  the  natal  climate 
of  their  progenitors,  and  fitted  to  a  residence  so  unfriendly  to  the 
people  of  even  the  most  southern  portion  of  Europe?  We  suggest 
that  the  explanation  may  be  found  in  the  changed  conditions  of 
their  life.  In  tropical  Africa  they  did  not  need,  and  indeed  could 
not  labor  in  the  fields  under  a  steady  heat  considerably  above  eighty 
degrees  the  year  round,*  but  in  the  Gulf  States  of  North  America 
they  are  exposed  only  to  an  average  heat  of  about  seventy  degrees, 
in  which  they  can  work  as  healthfully  as  an  Englishman  or  his 
descendants  can  labor  in  the  fields  of  Pennsylvania  in  a  mean  tem 
perature  of  fifty  degrees.  It  is  but  a  change  from  tropical  to  semi- 
tropical  heat,  and  the  exposure  and  the  toil  of  the  negro's  new 
residence  mediates  between  these  points  so  as  to  qualify  him  for 
exertion  which  Africa  would  not  allow,  and  which  a  constitution 
from  much  higher  latitudes  could  not  bear.  The  animal  heat  gen 
erated  by  labor  compensates  for  its  reduction  in  the  changed 
climate. 

The  familiar  adage — tl  Westward  the  Star  of  Empire  takes  its 

*  The  isothermal  charts  found  in  atlases  and  school  maps  of  fifteen  or  twenty 
years  ago,  are  not  reliable  for  such  an  inquiry  as  this  question  demands. 


36  INTRODUCTORY. 

way"  is  literally  true,  and  it  is  also  true  that  science,  literature  and 
religion  observe  the  same  line  of  march,  and  for  the  obvious  reason 
that  the  races  who  modify  opinion  and  speculation  according  to 
their  respective  mental  and  moral  constitutions,  and  impress  them 
selves  upon  all  their  pursuits,  enterprises,  and  achievements,  migrate 
along  their  several  lines  of  climate. 

The  received  doctrine  of  the  origin  of  all  the  varieties  of  men 
from  a  single  pair  of  progenitors,  and  their  propagation  from  a 
single  centre,  presents  no  difficulty  to  the  acceptance  or  admission 
of  the  law  which  we  are  considering;  for,  however  the  existing  dif 
ferences  of  nationality  in  all  their  shades,  from  the  tropical  African 
to  the  best  example  of  the  European,  were  originally  produced; 
whether  by  natural  causes  providentially  employed,  or  by  miracu 
lous  adjustment  of  each  kind  to  its  assigned  locality,  it  is  certain 
that  such  differences  actually  exist,  and  that  an  imperious  law  of 
distribution  rules  in  the  human,  as  in  the  animal  and  vegetable  oc 
cupancy  of  the  earth,  and  thus  secures  the  ultimate  subjection  of 
the  globe  in  all  its  varied  regions  to  a  harmoniously  appropriated 
humanity. 

The  proper  liberties  of  mankind  are  all  under  the  government 
of  law,  and  the  purposes  of  the  Creator  are  effected  by  its  orderly 
control.  The  diverse  inhabitants  of  the  earth  have, their  proper 
domiciles  secured  to  them  by  this  overruling  law  of  migration  and 
inhabitation.  No  present  superiority  of  any  .race  can  permanently 
contravene  it.  The  surviving  wanderers  will  in  good  time  be  re 
claimed  to  their  native  climates.  In  every  zone,  valley,  and  moun 
tain;  on  every  continent,  island,  and  peninsula,  this  grand  law  of 
inheritance  will  hold  the  land  for  the  natural  claimants,  and  will 
expel  the  usurpers  by  constraining  their  return  to  their  own.  The 
complete  subjugation  of  the  material  world,  under  the  laws  which 
govern  it,  seems  to  be  the  mission  of  the  European  families  of 
mankind.  When  their  proper  work  is  well  accomplished,  the 
Asiatic  and  African  tribes,  and  the  natural  occupants  of  the  Pacific 
islands  which  shall  survive,  will  enter  upon  their  own  domains  and 
go  forward  to  the  fulfillment  of  their  several  destinies.  Then  comes 
the  time  when  contrasts  without  collisions  shall  enrich  the  earth 
with  all  their  fullness  and  force,  and  differences  shall  be  ruled  into 
perfect  harmony. 

The  law  of  migration  and  settlement  rooted  in  the  special  appe- 


OCCUPATION    OF    THE    EARTH.  37 

tencies  of  tlie  various  races  of  men,  will  ever  protect  and  maintain 
their  primitive  differences  of  endowment,  and  their  diverse  services 
in  that  corroborative  unity  which  qualifies  the  aggregate  or  grand 
man  for  his  manifold  work  in  the  world.  Not  an  enforced  and  con 
fused  homogenity,  but  a  harmonized  diversity  is  demanded  to  fulfill 
the  functions  of  the  species.  The  brotherhood  of  men  is  not  a  con 
glomeration  of  likenesses,  but  an  orderly  organization  of  related  dif 
ferences.  This  tendency  is  manifest  in  the  modern  changes  in  the 
political  governments  of  both  the  old  and  the  new  world.  Federal 
unions  among  the  families  of  the  nations  are  its  expression  and  prom 
ise.  The  petty  states  of  France,  Germany,  Austria,  Italy,  and  that 
cluster  of  old-time  independencies  which  are  now  included  in  the 
Empire  of  Ilussia,  are  striking  examples.  Most  of  these  Unions 
were  at  first  in  a  great  degree  effected  by  force,  under  the  ambitious 
impulse  of  territorial  aggrandizement;  but  more  recently  these 
have  been  conformed,  more  or  less,  to  the  principle  of  voluntary  as 
sociation,  and  the  normal  order  of  natural  law,  which,  while  it 
associates  differences,  respects  them,  and  maintains  the  authority, 
and  the  duly  regulated  functions  of  local  centres,  at  the  same  time 
that  it  embraces  them  in  the  larger  and  more  general  entireties 
which  best  secure  internal  peace,  and  provide  external  defence. 
In  former  times  nations,  wholly  unfitted  to  unite,  and  incapable 
of  beneficial  union,  were  subdued  into  unnatural  and  repugnant 
nationalities;  but  more  recently,  federative  unions  are  effected  by 
the  free  play  of  natural  attraction.  North  Germany  is  rapidly 
organizing  the  kindred  peoples  into  a  political  union.  Italy  has 
taken  some  effective  steps  towards  its  proper  reorganization.  Austria 
has  parted  with  its  incongruous  trans-alpine  possessions,  and  has 
reconciled  Hungary  to  such  governmental  relations  as  are  for  the 
present  adapted  to  its  specialties  of  character  and  position.  The 
broken  balances  of  Europe  are  not  all  rectified,  but  they  are  in  pro 
cess  of  regulation  according  to  natural  order,  and  the  promise  of  a 
due  adjustment  is  every  year  better  and  better  assured;  the  time 
is  rapidly  approaching  when  political  changes  of  the  nations  will 
be  wholly  internal ;  or,  those  reformations  of  national  polity  which 
remain  to  be  accomplished,  will  be  wholly  improvements  in  the 
civil  and  social  order  of  domestic  aifairs. 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  of  America  seems  to  be 
the  model  and  the  prophecy  of  the  policy  which  is  to  prevail,  and 


38  INTRODUCTORY. 

to  determine  the  political  institutions  of  all  peoples,  who  are  near 
enough  and  like  enough,  to  require  and  to  accept  common  or  gen 
eral  governments. 

In  North  America  we  have  at  least  three  distinctly  different  zones 
of  climate,  and  a  corresponding  difference  of  their  inhabitants.  The 
law  which  we  have  been  considering,  in  free  operation  would,  and 
in  time  will,  throw  New  England  and  the  States  due  west  of  it  and 
the  British  provinces,  into  one  class,  with  the  valley  of  the  St.  Law 
rence  for  their  centre,  and  its  waters  for  their  easy  communication 
and  domestic  commerce.  The  Middle  States  from  Northern  Penn 
sylvania  to  Cape  Hatteras,  in  North  Carolina,  and  all  between  these 
lines  extended  westwardly,  are  fitted  for  another  class ;  and  the 
semi-tropical  States  lying  south  of  the  isothermal  line  which  enters 
at  Cape  Hatteras,  and  coincides  approximately  with  the  northern 
border  of  the  Gulf  States,  may  be  taken  to  mark  the  division  of  the 
southern  from  the  middle  climatic  zone  of  the  Union. 

The  appropriate  industries  and  special  interests  of  these  divisions 
exhibit  sufficient  diversity  to  modify  their  respective  pursuits  and 
policies,  and  to  demand  a  conforming  adaptation  of  domestic  enter 
prise  and  regulation.  Of  such  adaptation  in  promotion  of  special 
interests,  and  freedom  of  sectional  tendencies,  the  federal  and  local 
systems  are  admirably  capable;  and  under  similar  constitutions  the 
peoples  everywhere  who  are  nearly  related  in  blood  and  manners, 
may  have  all  their  specialties  protected,  and  all  their  common  char 
acteristics  preserved,  combined,  and  energized.  Political  policies 
may  vary  the  forms  of  union  and  intercourse  among  States  naturally 
allied,  giving  them  more  or  less  intimacy  of  commerce,  and  more  or 
less  unity  of  civil  government,  in  the  transition  age  of  societies,  but 
the  climatic  law  will  constantly  grow  more  and  more  effective,  and 
will  never  be  overruled  nor  long  postponed. 

Neither  antiquity  of  claim,  nor  vested  rights,  nor  opinions  and 
theories,  which  the  change  of  times  has  overthrown  in  the  past,  and 
will  again  and  again  modify  in  the  future,  can  finally  settle  the  rela 
tions  of  contiguous  States  of  naturally  allied  peoples;  neither  can 
military  force  nor  conventional  forms,  nor  the  obligations  of  treaties 
overrule  the  physical  and  moral  laws  of  human  nature.  They  may 
be  postponed  and  evaded,  but  providential  provisions  are  constantly 
in  the  endeavor  to  enforce  them,  and  will  ultimately  prevail. 


OCCUPATION    OF    THE    EARTU. 


39 


NOTE. — This  law  of  climate  in  the  government  of  human  migrations,  was  first 
announced  in  general  terms  by  Mr.  Carey,  in  the  Boston  Transcript,  of  26th  No 
vember,  1859.  It  was  not  known  to  him  when  he  published  the  third  and  last 
volume  of  his  "Principles  of  Social  Science,"  in  February,  1859,  and  there  are 
several  portions  of  that  work  which  require  correction  by  his  later  discovery.  In 
the  Philadelphia  Press  of  22d  of  December,  1859,  the  writer  of  this  treatise  gave 
this  newly-announced  law  an  ample  statistical  elucidation  and  vindication,  under 
the  caption  of  "  Pennsylvania's  Position  in  the  Union." 


CHAPTER   V. 

OF   WEALTH — THE   LAWS    AND  CONDITIONS    OF    ITS    GROWTH. 

Wealth — the  laws  and  conditions  of  its  growth  :  Definition  of  capital. — Defini 
tion  of  Wealth. — False  theories  built  upon  a  basis  of  disorder. — The  Malthu- 
sian  School. — Their  "preventive  and  corrective  checks"  of  Providential  mal 
adjustments! — Relation  of  sustenance  to  numbers. — Popular  error. — McCulloch 
follows  Malthus  with  a  statistical  statement  of  disproportion  of  food  to  popula 
tion. — Ricardo's  progressive  exhaustion  of  the  soil;  Mill  repeats  and  indorses 
them. — The  order  of  earthly  things  only  the  road  to  ruin,  temporary  mitigations 
only  end  in  despair. — British  political  economy  confronted  with  British  statis 
tics. — Lowe,  Levi,  and  Gladstone  on  the  facts. — Data  of  British  estimates. — 
Wealth  doubles  in  GREAT  BRITAIN  in  twenty  years,  population  in  fifty  years. — 
Accelerated  rate  of  enhancement  of  wealth  in  the  latest  decennial  period. — 
Wealth  of  FRANCE  increasing  faster  than  that  of  Great  Britain. — The  figures 
and  facts. — Her  increased  product  of  wheat,  sugar  and  potatoes. — Food  product 
doubled  in  thirty-five  years,  population  in  two  hundred  and  seventy-seven 
years. — In  the  densest  populations  of  Europe  the  supply  of  food  greater,  and 
growing  faster  than  the  increase  of  demand. — Relative  supply  and  requirement 
in  the  UNITED  STATES. — Rate  of  increase  of  population  and  wealth  j  the  former 
doubling  in  twenty-three  and  a  half  years  ;  the  latter  in  eight  and  a  half  years. — 
Annual  product  not  capital  value,  the  measure  of  supply. — Decennial  census 
reports  of  annual  products  of  industry  in  the  United  States,  not  above  two- 
thirds  of  their  actual  value. — The  deficiency  demonstrated. — Varied  rates  of 
increased  production  in  particulars. — Increase  of  product  of  wealth  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  twice  as  great  in  the  decade  1850-60  as  in  that 
of  1840-50. — A  law  of  increase  indicated. — In  the  normal  order  of  civilized  in 
dustries,  sustenance  outgrows  population  in  accelerating  movement. 

BY  wealth  we  do  not  mean  capital,  merely  in  its  common  ac 
ceptation,  though  capital  in  this  sense  is  embraced  in  it. 

Capital,  in  business  language,  means  an  accumulation  of  values 
employed  for  further  production  or  profits.  In  a  broader  and  better 
sense,  it  embraces  not  only  improved  land,  ships,  wagons,  ploughs, 
machinery,  food,  clothing,  money,  and  the  like  tangible  subjects  of 
property,  but  ideas  and  credit,  as  much  as  these,  because  they  are 
equally  efficient  and  necessary  to  the  production  of  new  values. 

Labor,  whether  of  handicraft,  skill,  or  superintendence;  is,  also, 
40 


WEALTH — LAWS    OF   GROWTH.  41 

capital ;  but  it  is  usually  treated  rather  as  the  associate  than  as  a 
component  of  capital. 

The  production  of  wealth  employs  all  these  agencies,  and  covers 
all  the  faculties  and  forces,  moral,  intellectual,  and  material,  which 
it  can  in  any  way  enlist  in  the  service ;  and  it  is  a  finer,  as  well  as 
a  more  practical  apprehension,  to  regard  wealth  in  a  higher  and 
wider  light  than  the  mere  aggregate  of  the  substantive  things  in 
which  it  embodies  itself  to  the  senses  and  are  exchanged  in  market. 
Taken  as  the  means  and  measure  of  man's  power  over  nature,  it  em 
braces  all  the  elements  of  capital,  and  opens  up  to  the  light  of  its 
true  meaning.  It  cannot  be  restricted  to  the  things  exchangeable  in 
trade.  Whoever  would  understand  it  must  follow  it  as  it  rises 
through  material  things,  and  all  their  service  to  the  life  of  man,  and 
stores  its  highest  products  in  his  heart  and  mind.  Capital  and 
Labor,  with  the  intelligence  that  directs,  and  the  aims  which  warrant 
and  sanctify  the  ends,  are  tributaries  to  all  the  designs  of  our  tem 
poral  existence.  In  such  service  they  are  worthy  of  higher  con 
sideration  and  better  uses  than  we  ever  give  them. 

The  appointed  dominion  of  man  over  earth  and  air  and  ocean,  means 
nothing  more,  nothing  less,  than  temporal  wealth  raised  in  its  uses 
into  human  welfare.  The  mastery  of  nature  grows  with  every 
victory.  Every  new  discovery  in  the  constitution  of  the  material 
things  which  surround  us,  gives  us  a  new  force  to  control  them.  It 
is  power  put  at  compound  interest;  each  new  product  added  to  the 
principal  to  yield  a  larger  interest ;  in  consonance  with  that  ever- 
enhancing  power  of  the  spirit  to  which  it  ministers  in  sublunary 
things. 

This  apprehension  of  wealth  shakes  the  mind  free  from  the  clogs 
.of  market-house  logic,  and  reflects  the  highest  lights  upon  the  laws 
which  rule  it  in  all  its  functions. 

But  the  service  of  the  elements  requires  of  us  their  administra 
tion  under  natural  law.  Nature  bestows  none  of  her  best  benefits 
upon  indolence  or  ignorance.  The  tribes  that  content  themselves 
with  plundering  her  lakes  and  rivers,  her  forests  and  prairies,  find 
her  austere,  repugnant  and  niggard  to  their  necessities.  To  partial 
and  poor  cultivators,  she  turns  poor  in  exact  correspondence — to  those 
that  have  shall  be  given. 

Disordered  and  misgoverned  societies  have,  until  very  recently, 
and  still  in  the  majority  of  instances,  afforded  the  data  from  which 
4 


42  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

the  standard  authorities  constructed  their  theories.  These  writers 
looking  only  to  production,  distribution  and  consumption  of  commodi 
ties  in  past  history,  and  reasoning  not  from  the  intrinsic  capabilities 
of  men  and  things  in  the  better  order  to  which  they  are  rapidly 
advancing,  but  from  the  data  of  an  imperfect  experience,  have 
invented  systems  dreadfully  discordant  with  divine  beneficence  and 
with  human  hope.  Their  doctrines,  under  correction  of  later  and 
more  promising  facts,  are  now  less  confidently  paraded;  indeed, 
they  are  rather  assumed  than  asserted  as  demonstrable  truths,  but 
like  original  sin,  they  break  out  into  actual  transgression  upon  every 
tempting  occasion. 

Mr.  Malthus  digested  what  he  took  to  be  the  evidence  afforded 
by  history  into  a  doctrine  of  despair,  and  his  formulas  have  been 
taken  for  aphorisms  of  science  by  all  his  English  successors  and 
American  disciples.  So  far  from  believing  in  the  constant  growth 
of  man's  power  over  nature,  he  affirmed  a  constantly-increasing 
disproportion  of  sustenance  to  population — that,  under  the  laws 
which  govern  the  subjects,  population  tends  to  increase  in  a  geomet 
rical,  while  the  means  of  subsistence  relatively  fall  off  to  an  arith 
metical  ratio.  In  figures  he  puts  it,  that  population  unchecked 
would  in  two  centuries  increase  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight 
times,  while  food  under  no  circumstances  can  increase  more  than 
eight  times  in  the  same  period ;  or,  if  it  were  possible  to  produce  at 
once  on  the  earth  such  a  multitude,  it  could  not  afford  them  the 
one-sixteenth  part  of  the  food  which  they  would  require.  The 
corrective  checks,  "  war,  pestilence,  and  famine,"  Mr.  Malthus 
believes  to  have  been  necessarily  provided  to  prevent  such  a  whole 
sale  catastrophe ;  and,  that  their  operation  is  distributed  by  retail  all 
along  the  life  of  the  race,  by  way  of  correcting  this  nial-adjustineut 
in  the  highest  sphere  of  creation,  which  strangely  enough  occurs 
nowhere  else  in  the  Maker's  works  ! 

Mr.  Malthus  mistook  facts  logically  possible  only  in  circumstances 
wholly  impossible,  for  laws  arising  out  of  the  nature  of  things. 
He  made  the  great  blunder  of  taking  the  existing  fertility  of  the 
human  race,  designed  to  repair  the  terrible  waste  of  life  during  the 
ages  of  disorder,  for  a  natural  rate  of  reproduction,  which  he 
furthermore  mistook  for  an  inflexible  measure.  Upon  data  so 
shabbily  stupid  he  used  the  inductive  method  of  reasoning,  and 
called  the  horrid  result  philosophy  !  It  never  occurred  to  him  to 


WEALTH — LAWS    OF    GROWTH.  43 

look  for  providential  adjustments  of  natural  laws  to  varied  condi 
tions  of  their  subjects,  which  must  prevent  the  processes  of  the 
creation  from  destroying  their  own  aims. 

As  a  theory,  relating  to  the  earth's  fitness  for  that  highest  use 
to  which  all  other  uses  are  tributary,  this  doctrine  might  be  dis 
missed  as  an  insanity  of  pretended  science ;  but  something  of  its 
mischief  may  be  traced  in  popular  reasoning  founded  upon  hasty 
observation,  and  is,  therefore,  entitled  to  fuller  consideration. 

We  live  in  a  new  country,  where  population  does  not  press  upon 
the  means  of  subsistence ;  where  famines  never  come,  and  where 
pauperism  is  an  exotic.  Within  our  boundaries  there  is  yet  a  wilder 
ness  of  fertility  which  tempts  emigration  even  from  its  eastern 
regions,  as  yet  not  half  occupied  or  cultivated,  with  still  easier 
offers  of  livelihood,  and  better  chances  for  rapid  and  great  advance 
ment  of  fortune;  where  labor  is  nearly  the  only  form  of  productive 
power,  and  other  capital  is  too  scarce  to  monopolize  the  opportunity 
of  acquiring  wealth.  From  across  the  ocean  a  steady  tide  of  hopeful 
poverty  is  constantly  flowing  from  amid  its  mountain  steeps  of  wealth 
toward  our  plain  of  better  averaged  competency.  Under  these  in 
fluences  it  is  easy  to  conclude,  and  as  easy  to  excuse  the  conclusion, 
that  there  is  something  in  the  law  of  growth  in  human  society 
unfriendly  to  its  masses,  and  unduly  favorable  to  the  advanced  class, 
of  wealth  and  condition,  and  that  this  disparity  results  from  the 
established  order  of  things.  But  facts  may  be  accidents,  and  results 
•do  not  always  indicate  constitutional  or  permanent  laws.  And,  not 
withstanding  the  illusions  which  hang  like  a  fog  over  real  facts,  the 
truth  is  not  left  without  a  witness  in  any  quarter  of  the  globe,  for 
wherever  in  any  country  there  is  substantial  progress,  that  is,  where- 
ever  the  true  order  of  things  is  in  any  measure  observed,  in  the 
same  measure  subsistence  supports  population  and  tends  always  to 
outgrow  it. 

Even  in  England  itself,  all  the  facts  of  experience  are  in  direct 
refutation  of  the  dismal  science,  yet  we  find  such  authorities  as 
J.  R.  McCulloch,  the  popular  economist  and  statistician  of  Eng 
land,  any  time  within  the  last  twenty  years,  declaring  that  "  sixty 
years  is  the  shortest  time  in  which  capital  in  an  old  and  densely- 
peopled  country  can  be  expected  to  be  doubled,"  while  it  is  in 
proof  that  population  has  doubled  in  England  and  Wales  in  the 
fifty  years  between  1801  and  1851. 


44  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

Ricardo,  whose  work  is  the  koran  of  this  sect  of  economists, 
holds  that  the  progress  of  cultivation  by  a  fixed  necessity,  begins 
with  the  best  lands  first,  and  descends  by  a  regular  gradation  to 
poorer  still  and  poorer,  until  absolute  sterility  is  reached,  and  gen 
eral  starvation  would  be  the  catastrophe,  but  that  it  is  distributed 
all  along  the  course  of  exhaustion,  and  thus  keeps  hungry  mouths 
and  recurring  harvests  in  some  sort  of  balance.  Ricardo  wrote  so 
lately  as  in  1817,  and  McCulloch  repeats  him  in  effect,  saying  that 
"from  the  operation  of  fixed  and  permanent  causes,  the  increasing 
sterility  of  soil  is  sure,  in  the  long  run.  to  overmatch  the  improve 
ments  that  occur  in  agriculture  and  machinery."  McCulloch  wrote 
until  1863  without  recanting.  So  the  ghost  of  Malthus,  who  died 
in  1824,  still  haunts  the  highways  of  economic  science. 

But  last,  and  therefore  worst  of  all,  John  Stuart  Mill,  claimed  to 
be  the  philosopher  of  philanthropy,  in  his  chapter  on  "  The  Law  of 
the  Increase  of  Production  from  Land,"  published  in  the  year  of 
grace,  1865,  reproduces  these  horrors  in  all  their  hideousness.  The 
over-population  theory  of  Malthus,  and  the  constantly-declining 
productiveness  of  land  of  Ricardo,  are  reproduced  with  such  a 
simple  confidence  of  their  truth  as  dispenses  with  any  attempt  at 
their  demonstration. 

He  thinks  that  emigration — such  as  the  potato-rot,  the  lack  of 
remunerative  labor,  and  the  evictions  of  the  small  tenants  in  Ire 
land,  compel,  and  the  fresh  soils  of  Australia  and  the  wilds  of  North 
America  invite,  may  occasionally  check  the  progress  and  mitigate 
the  effects  of  this  frightful  disproportion  between  man  and  food. 
The  present  pressure,  he  suggests,  might  be  temporarily  postponed 
by  the  substitution  of  American  maize  for  the  deficient  vegetables 
of  Europe,  as  a  brief  reprieve  of  the  old  world;  but  then,  such 
fullness  of  supply  would  mischievously  increase  the  growth  of  popu 
lation,  and  soon  overlap  the  increased  supply  of  subsistence  again, 
and  the  checks,  preventive  and  corrective,  of  Malthus'  invention  be 
again  demanded  in  all  their  vigor. 

So  present  and  pressing  are  the  alarms  of  his  theory  to  him.  that 
he  believes  the  emigration  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Western  States 
of  America  "  is  what  enables  population  to  go  on  unchecked  in  the 
Union  without  having  yet  diminished  the  returns  to  industry  or 
increased  the  difficulty  of  earning  a  subsistence;"  but  he  has  no 
hope  that  emigration  at  even  its  greatest  height  "could  be  kept  up 


WEALTH — LAWS    OF    GROWTH.  45 

sufficiently  to  take  off  all  that  portion  of  the  annual  increase,  which, 
being  in  excess  of  the  progress  made  during  the  same  period  in  the 
arts  of  life,  tends  to  render  living  more  difficult  for  every  averagely- 
situated  individual  in  the  community ; "  and  again,  in  the  United 
States,  as  elsewhere  and  everywhere  in  this  wretchedly  ordered 
world,  comes  in  the  hopeless  preventive  check  of  prudence  in 
marriage,  with  the  three  reliable  corrective  ones  in  leash — War, 
Pestilence  and  Famine.  Mr.  Mill  says  of  this  gorgon  law,  "it  is 
the  most  important  proposition  in  political  economy;  "  meaning  his 
theory  of  it;  and  u  were  the  law  different,  nearly  all  the  phenomena 
of  the  production  and  distribution  of  wealth  would  be  different." 
We  may  be  allowed  to  be  glad  of  this  admission  ;  for  if  the  founda 
tion  of  the  entire  system  of  this  school  of  economists  can  be  shown 
to  be  utterly  false  in  facts  and  as  false  in  its  inferences,  the  whole 
fabric  raised  upon  it  tumbles  into  rubbish. 

Our  appeal  from  theory  to  facts,  may  be  safely  rested  upon  such 
as  we  here  submit,  which  though  necessarily  limited  in  instances, 
are  so  selected  as  to  be  entirely  conclusive. 

Joseph  Lowe  calculated  the  value  of  the  real  and  personal  prop 
erty  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  in  A.  D.  1793,  at  seven  thousand 
one  hundred  and  thirty-two  millions  of  dollars  (87,132,000,000) 
and  the  population  at  fourteen  millions  five  hundred  thousand 
(14,500,000),  which  gives  an  average  of  four  hundred  and  ninety- 
one  dollars  to  each  person  (8491.86). 

Leoni  Levi,  for  the  year  1858,  puts  the  value  of  the  property  at 
twenty-nine  thousand  one  hundred  and  seventy-eight  millions  of 
dollars  (829,178,000,000),  making  an  average  of  one  thousand  and 
six  dollars  per  head  (81,006).  Here  then  the  accepted  authorities 
give  us  an  exact  doubling  of  the  population  in  all  the  British 
Islands  in  Europe  in  sixty-five  years,  with  a  four-fold  increase  of 
property,  and  a  doubling  of  the  average  share  of  each  individual  in 
the  same  time,  and  Mr.  Mill's  "averagely-situated"  individual,  even 
in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  did  not  find  it  more  difficult  to  secure 
a  living  in  this  long  period,  but  in  fact  had  his  average  share  of  the 
total  property  of  the  United  Kingdom  doubled. 

But  the  rate  of  increase  in  the  general  wealth  was  not  uniform, 
and  so  far  was  it  from  diminishing  that  it  increased  rapidly  year  by 
year  from  the  earliest  date  to  that  of  the  latest  authoritative  reports. 
According  to  them  the  average  increase  of  the  whole  period  from 


46  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

1793  to  1858  required  thirty-two  and  a  half  years  for  doubling 
itself,  but  the  most  reliable  estimates  for  fourteen  years  preceding 
1S'66,  give  an  increase  at  the  rate  of  doubling  in  the  greatly  shorter 
period  of  a  fraction  less  than  nineteen  years  in  the  kingdom  of  Great 
Britain,  Ireland  excluded.  Mr.  Gladstone  in  his  speech  upon  the 
Reform  bill  in  1866  infers,  from  the  increase  of  the  income  tax 
during  the  next  preceding  fourteen  years,  that  the  wealth  of  the 
kingdom  of  Great  Britain,  including  Wales  and  Scotland,  amounted  to 
sixty-five  per  cent,  or  at  the  compound  rate  of  three  and  three  quar 
ters  per  cent  per  annum — doubling  in  nineteen  years,  as  already 
said;  the  population  at  the  same  time  increasing  a  fraction  over  one 
and  a  half  per  cent  per  annum,  or  doubling  in-  fifty  years. 

England  takes  a  decennial  census  of  its  population,  but  does  not 
estimate  the  value  of  the  real  and  personal  property  of  the  kingdom 
by  assessment  or  appraisement,  as  is  done  in  the  United  States. 
The  estimates  of  its  statisticians,  however,  are  probably  as  near  the 
truth  as  the  census  valuations  of  the  marshals  under  the  last-named 
system.  They  have  the  rental,  the  income  tax,  the  sworn  value  of 
decedent's  estates,  bank,  fire  and  marine  insurance  and  other  cor 
poration  reports,  the  excises,  and  the  imports  and  exports  of  the 
kingdom,  for  their  data,  and  all  these  are  official,  and  as  nearly 
accurate  as  might  be  attained  by  any  other  means. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  inference  from  the  income  tax  is  probably  a  little 
too  high  for  the  general  average  growth  of  wealth.  The  national 
funds  are  not  expected  to  yield  more  than  three  and  one-quarter  per 
cent  upon  the  investment,  which,  on  account  of  their  absolute  secu 
rity,  is  a  little  too  low  for  a  basis.  Investments  in  lands,  subject  to 
income  tax  and  other  abatements,  at  four  per  cent,  and  in  railroads, 
canals,  houses,  and  other  real  property,  still  more  burdened  by  risks, 
repairs,  and  charges,  four  and  one-half  per  cent.  When  these  rates  are 
considered,  about  three  and  one-half  per  cent  per  annum  may  be 
safely  taken  for  the  average  increase  of  wealth,  which  is  a  doubling, 
in  the  last  decennial  period,  once  in  twenty  years,  or  two  and  a  half 
times  faster  than  the  present  rate  of  the  population. 

England  surely  may  be  taken  to  be  one  of  Mr.  McCulloch's  "old 
and  densely-peopled  countries"  which  he  said  could  not  double  its 
wealth  in  less  than  sixty  years;  but  we  find  that  she  has  increased 
forty-one  per  cent  in  the  ten  years  from  1856  to  1866,  which 
promises  a  doubling  in  twenty  years.  This  is  at  twice  the  rate  of 


WEALTH — LAWS    OF    GROWTH.  47 

its  growth  between  the  years  1840  and  1850,  which  is  explained  by 
the  advantage  of  the  later  period  from  the  influx  of  California 
and  Australian  gold,  the  regularly  enhancing  wealth  of  all  her 
customers,  the  improvement  of  machinery,  and,  by  the  additional 
good  fortune  that  escaped  the  general  scarcity  in  Europe  and  the 
famine  of  1847  in  Ireland. 

The  result  of  this  inquiry  may  be  thus  presented  :  Wealth  grows 
now  in  Great  Britain  at  the  rate  of  forty-one  per  cent  in  ten  years ; 
population,  eleven  and  one-third  per  cent.  The  average  of  the 
total  values  of  the  property  of  the  Kingdom  were  to  each  person  : 

In  the  year  1851 $  827 

"    «   1861 , 1,074 

«   1866 1,239 

being  an  increase  of  fifty  per  cent  in  fifteen  years,  and  a  doubling 
of  the  average  distributive  share  of  each  individual -in  twenty-five 
and  one-half  years. 

This  is  the  answer  that  the  statistical  history  of  one  old  country, 
pretty  densely  peopled,  and  with  a  population  increasing  at  a  me 
dium  rate,  gives  to  the  Ricardo-Mill  theory  of  political  economy, 
which  rests  all  its  systematic  doctrines  on  the  fundamental  proposi 
tion  that  sustenance  and  supplies  are  ever  becoming  less  and  less 
adequate  to  the  demands  of  human  life. 

Let  us  now  glance  at  the  condition  of  a  nation  as  old,  nearly  as 
densely  peopled,  but  with  a  population  almost  stationary : — 

France  in  1836  had  thirty-three  and  a  half  millions  of  people; 
in  1856,  thirty-six  millions.  Increase  in  twenty  years  only  four 
and  three-quarters  per  cent,  or  one-quarter  per  cent  per  annum. 
Her  aggregate  domestic  exports  for  the  ten  years  from  1826  to  1836 
were  valued  at  five  thousand  two  hundred  and  fifteen  millions  of 
francs  (5,215,000,000f.);  for  the  ten  years  from  1846  to  1856,  at 
twelve  thousand  and  forty-five  millions  (12,045;000,000f).  In 
crease  in  twenty  years  one  hundred  and  thirty-one  per  cent  in  the 
same  time  that  her  population  was  increasing  but  four  and  three- 
quarters  per  cent. 

Measuring  the  growth  of  wealth  in  France  by  the  growth  in 
England,  relatively  to  their  foreign  commerce,  we  find  that  in  the 
same  twenty  years  England  and  Ireland  increased  their  domestic 
exports  just  one  hundred  and  twenty  per  cent,  or  eleven  per  cent 
less  than  the  increase  in  France.  Therefore,  by  this  standard 


48  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

France  was  increasing  in  wealth  at  a  slightly  faster  rate  than  Eng 
land,  previous  to  the  year  1856.  But  the  gains  of  France  upon 
the  exports  of  her  products  are  much  larger  than  those  of  England. 
Not  more  than  one-fifth  of  their  value  is  in  the  foreign  material  of 
which  they  are  fabricated.  The  four-fifths  at  least  being  her  own 
raw  material  and  food  converted  into  the  commodities,  while  Eng 
land's  exports  of  manufactures  have  one-half  of  the  value  of  her 
total  domestic  exports  in  her  imports  of  raw  sugar,  flax,  cotton, 
hides,  hemp,  silk,  wool,  and  dyestuffs  ;  to  say  nothing  of  the  bread- 
stuffs  and  provisions,  and  the  hundred  other  articles  for  which  she 
depends  on  foreign  countries. 

For  .these  and  other  reasons  the  annual  profits  of  industry  in 
France  are  considerably  greater  than  in  England,  that  is,  more  than 
three  and  one-half  per  cent,  while  her  increase  of  people  is  almost 
nothing — one-fourth  of  one  per  cent. 

With  regard  to  her  production  of  food,  the  progress  has  been 
marvelous  :  In  1820  the  yield  of  wheat  was  one  hundred  and  fifty- 
three  millions  of  bushels — a  pro  rata  of  five  and  four-tenths  bushels 
per  head;  in  1857  it  had  risen  to  three  hundred  and  thirteen 
millions  (Dictionaire  Universal,  du  Commerce  tome  i,  p.  1384), 
affording  eight  and  six-tenths  bushels  to  each  individual.  This  is 
three  and  one-half  bushels  per  head  more  than  the  people  of  the 
United  States  consume,  leaving  one  hundred  and  thirty-three  mil 
lions  of  bushels  for  exportation.  Her  beet-root  sugar  in  1861 
amounted  to  six  and  one-quarter  pounds  per  head.  (We  raised 
eleven  pounds  of  cane  and  maple  sugar.)  Her  product  of  potatoes 
was  two  hundred  and  eighty  millions  of  bushels.  The  United 
States,  with  a  population  equal  to  five-sixths  of  hers,  produced  but 
one  hundred  and  fifty-two  millions,  or  a  little  more  than  half  the 
per  capita  allowance  of  the  French. 

The  total  agricultural  production  of  France  has  doubled  in  the 
last  thirty  years,  while  at  her  present  rate  of  increase  it  will  take 
two  hundred  and  seventy-seven  years  to  double  her  population. 
With  a  density  of  one  hundred  and  seventy-nine  persons  to  the 
square  mile,  or  two  and  three-quarter  times  that  of  Pennsylvania 
(sixty-five),  she  feeds  all  her  people  and  has  food  to  spare.  The 
whole  of  the  New  England  and  Middle  States  of  the  United  States 
in  I860  had  but  sixty-four  persons  to  the  square  mile,  and  when 
the  population  of  the  entire  Union  shall  number  one  hundred  mil- 


WEALTH — LAWS    OF    GROWTH.  49 

lions  there  will  be  but  sixty-eight,  or  they  will  have  a  density  of 
but  three-eighths  (thirty-eight  per  cent)  of  that  of  France ;  it  is 
now  but  one-eighth. 

Population  is  certainly  not  pressing  upon  sustenance  in  France, 
nor  threatening  to  do  so.  We  speak  not  now  of  its  distribution, 
but  of  the  abundant  and  constantly  increasing  abundance  of  pro 
vision  for  the  support  of  the  nation. 

Having  seen  how  much  faster  wealth  increases  than  population  in 
the  United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain,  the  density  being  the  great 
est  in  Europe,  except  in  the  little  Kingdom  of  Belgium,  and  the 
increase  of  population  at  nearly  the  highest  rate  known  in  Europe ; 
and,  having  also  seen  how  the  wealth  of  France  grows  at  a  propor 
tionately  faster  rate  upon  a  population  nearly  stationary  and  of 
medium  density,*  we  now  turn  to  the  like  statistics  of  the  United 
States,  where  the  movement  in  numbers  and  wealth  are  both  on  a 
grander  scale  than  in  any  of  the  countries  of  Europe. 

The  capital  value  of  real  and  personal  property,  excluding  that 
in  the  slaves,  according  to  the  census  valuation,  increased  in  the 
decade  1850-60,  one  hundred  and  twenty-six  per  cent,  and  the 
population  thirty-five  and  five-tenths  per  cent;  or  the  capital 
wealth  grew  at  the  rate  of  eight  and  one-half  per  cent,  and  the 
population  a  fraction  above  three  per  cent  per  annum.  The  former 
doubling  in  eight  and  a  half  years,  and  the  latter  in  twenty-three 
and  a  half  years.  The  average  share  of  each  individual  in  1850 
standing  at  two  hundred  and  sixty-six  dollars,  and  rising  in  1860 
to  four  hundred  and  forty-nine  dollars,  being  an  increase  in  these 
ten  years  of  sixty-nine  per  cent  upon  the  pro  rata  share  of  each 
individual. 

But,  everywhere  it  is  the  annual  produce  that  measures  the  pro 
vision  for  the  wants  of  men,  and  for  their  growth  in  numbers,  and 
improvement  of  their  condition.  Especially  in  the  United  States, 
where  the  prospective  value  of  real  estate  is  always  in  advancefof  its 
present  yield  of  profits,  because  it  is  always  as  certain  as  that  already 
reached,  the  capital  increases  considerably  faster  than  its  current 
productiveness,  the  product  must  be  taken,  if  we  would  ascertain 
its  relation  to  the  demand  for  subsistence.  Much  of  the  estimated 

*  In  1865  England  and  Wales  had  three  hundred  and  sixty  to  the  square  mile; 
Scotland,  ninety-eight ;  United  Kingdom,  two  hundred  and  sixty-seven;  Ireland, 
in  1SG1,  one  hundred  and  eighty-two. 


50  QUESTIONS.  OF    THE   DAY. 

value  of  fixed  property  here  lies  in  expectation ;  it  is,  therefore,  the 
product  which  land  and  other  capital  is  made  to  yield  that  measures 
the  nation's  actual  wealth.  The  same  is  true  of  that  greatest  source 
of  wealth — labor-power.  All  the  agents,  natural  and  artificial,  that 
may  be  used  in  production,  depend  for  their  effects  upon  the  man 
ner  and  measure  of  their  employment.  Land,  labor,  water  and  wind 
power,  money,  and  credit  in  all  its  forms,  are  in  the  same  category. 
Therefore,  products,  rather  than  capital,  are  the  data  for  all  calcula 
tions  in  this  matter  of  wealth  and  of  its  service  in  the  support  and 
development  of  life. 

Our  decennial  census  reports  do  not  nearly  cover  the  annual  pro 
ducts  of  capital  and  industry.  For  instance,  they  take  a  very 
inadequate  account  of  the  current  consumption  of  their  own  crops 
by  our  agriculturists,  their  families,  and  employees.  In  1840  this 
class  amounted  to  three-fourths  of  the  total  population,  and  ap 
proached  the  same  proportion  in  1850  •  nor,  are  any  manufacturing 
or  mechanical  products  of  the  year  returned  where  the  annual  value 
falls  below  five  hundred  dollars.  Besides  all  this — which  probably 
amounts  to  one-fourth  of  the  actual  production  of  the  country — no 
account  is  taken  of  the  labor  employed  in  clearing  new  and  im 
proving  old  lands,  in  building  railroads,  canals,  houses,  factories, 
steamships,  and  other  vessels ;  nor,  of  the  labor  employed  in  opening 
and  working  mines,  in  the  fine  arts,  and  a  large  portion  of  the  useful 
arts.  All  of  which  omissions  may  be  safely  stated  at  one-third  of 
the  value  of  the  products  of  agriculture  and  manufactures,  me 
chanics  and  the  arts,  noticed  by  the  census-takers.  Some  of  these 
contributions  to  the  subsistence  and  enjoyment  of  the  people — 
those  which  continue  their  service  during  the  period — appear  in 
the  valuation  of  the  fixed  and  accumulated  property  at  the  recur 
ring  census  appraisements,  but  in  the  aggregate,  very  far  below 
their  value  in  current  use. 

That  the  census  accounts  of  the  annual  product  are  very  far  below 
the  truth  is  apparent  from  the  fact  that  they  allow  but  $62.28  for 
the  share  of  each  person  in  1840;  $64.00  in  1850;  and  $86.31  in 
I860.*  This  is  not  enough  for  the  consumption  in  1860  by  $14.00 

*  Agricultural  products  ninety  per  cent  increase  upon  value  of  1850,  $1,818,- 
156,816;  manufacturing,  mining,  mechanic  arts,  eighty-seven  and  a  half  per  cent 
upon  half  the  value  of  1850  (half  allowed  for  raw  material),  gives  $857,671,664, 
total  $2,675,828,480 -5- 31,000,000  =  $86.31  per  cap. 


WEALTH — LAWS    OF    GROWTH.  51 

per  capita,  or  nearly  8450,000,000  in  the  aggregate;  besides,  the  vast 
sum  of  $8,000,000.000  of  increased  capital  value  in  the  decade  is 
to  be  accounted  for,  which,  if  we  allow  even  ten  per  cent  for  specu 
lative  valuation  above  that  of  1850,  would  leave  a  deficiency  of  one 
thousand  two  hundred  and  twenty  millions,  or  840  per  capita,  which 
must  have  resulted  from  actual  production,  and  this  addition  to  the 
sum  allowed  by  the  census  would  amount  to  $126,*  average  yield  of 
the  labor  capital  and  enterprise  of  each  person,  which  is  surely  little 
enough. 

But  our  inquiry  does  not  demand  actual  but  comparative  values 
at  the  several  periods  which  we  take  for  the  purpose  of  estimating 
the  proportion  of  wealth  produced  for  the  supply  of  the  national 
consumption  and  accumulation.  The  errors  and  defects  of  one 
census  are  about  equivalent  to  those  of  the  others,  and  so  we  have 
the  ratio  of  provision  to  the  number  of  the  inhabitants,  and  this  is 
all  that  we  want  for  our  present  purpose. 

The  increase  of  the  products  of  capital  and  industry  in  the  year 
1860  over  those  of  1850  are  well  ascertained  to  have  been  : — 

In  the  Mining,  Manufacturing,  and  Mechanic  Arts...     S7i  per  cent. 

"  Agriculture 90  " 

"  Agricultural  Implements 63  " 

"  Books,  Newspapers,  and  Job-printing 250  " 

"  Coal 170 

"  Wheat 71 

"  Indian  Corn 42  " 

"  Potatoes 68  " 

"  Livestock 100  " 

"  Number  of  Horned  Cattle 40  " 

"  Horses  and  Mules  48  " 

"  Sheep  and  Swine 9  " 

"  Ginned  Cotton 112  " 

"  Tobacco 115 

We  have  no  hesitation  in  fixing  the  actual  increase  of  the  pro 
ducts  of  1860  over  those  of  1850  at  one  hundred  per  cent.  This 

*  We  reach  this  result  in  another  way — the  population  in  1850  was  twenty- 
three  millions,  in  1860,  thirty-one  millions — mean  number  twenty-seven  millions. 
Their  consumption  in  ten  years  at  $100  a  head  makes  twenty-seven  thousand 
millions.  Putting  the  products  of  industry  at  $126  a  head  per  annum,  we  get 
the  sum  of  thirty-four  hundred  millions,  which  gives  an  accumulation  by  labor 
and  capital  employed  of  seven  thousand  millions.  The  census  of  1860  states  the 
increased  value  at  eight  thousand  millions,  and  we  allow  this  one  thousand  mil 
lions  of  difference  for  speculation  beyond  the  actual  value  of  property. 


52  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

would  increase  the  per  capita  share  of  the  people  to  forty-seven  and 
a  half  per  cent  in  ten  years,  or  to  forty  per  cent,  if  only  ninety  per 
cent  be  taken  for  the  additional  product. 

Let  us  now  restate  our  results  in  tabular  form. 

Increase  of  population,  production,  and,  increase  pro  rata  per 
capita  in  the  decade  1850  to  1860. 

Of  Population.  ^Annual  Of  Share  £  Ann**  Products 

United  States 35.5  per  cent  100  per  cent 47£  per  cent. 

France 2.6 " 44 " 40          '• 

Great  Britain 11.3 " 41 " 26i        " 

Among  the  most  striking  results  of  an  extended  examination  of 
the  growth  of  wealth  in  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States,  we 
find  the  fact  that  it  was  just  twice  as  great  in  the  decade  of  1850-60, 
in  both  countries,  as  in  that  next  preceding  it,  1840-50.  The  pre 
vious  decades  of  the  present  century  were  either  disturbed  by 
expensive  wars,  or  by  great  commercial  convulsions,  which  greatly 
affect  the  data  that  they  present  for  estimating  the  normal  progress 
of  industry  and  trade;  the  two  last-mentioned  periods  were  but  little 
affected  by  any  injurious  events  in  the  business  affairs  of  either;  or, 
relatively  to  their  respective  resources,  they  were  about  equally 
exposed  to  them,  and  they  both  had  the  advantage  in  a  relatively 
equal  degree  of  all  that  contributed  to  immensely  enhance  the  pros 
perity  of  the  period  1850-60.  That  they  should  both  double  their 
decennial  advance  in  wealth  in  the  last  of  these  periods  as  against  the 
previous  one,  under  conditions  so  similar,  goes  a  great  way  to  indi 
cate  a  law  of  progress  very  uniform  in  its  operation,  and  as  that  law 
is  found  to  operate  so  favorably  for  the  welfare  of  both,  the  mani 
festation  is  clearly  and  conclusively  in  favor  of  our  proposition  which 
may  be  thus  stated : — In  a  good  order  of  human  societies — in  the 
present  state  of  civilization — the  natural  provision  for  the  suste 
nance  of  the  people  is  abundant  and  growing  more  and  more  so  with 
whatever  increase  of  numbers  that  can  occur ;  the  power  of  men 
over  nature  growing  ever  more  complete  in  the  increasing  skill 
applied  to  production. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

SOURCES   OF   ADVANCEMENT    IN    WEALTH. 

Sources  of  advancement  in  wealth. — Seven  general  sources. — Nature's  resist 
ance. — The  super-natural  in  the  "Mechanical  powers." — Measure  of  steam 
force  in  equivalents  of  man-power.  Employed  in  England  equal  to  the  labor- 
power  of  one-quarter  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Globe. — Europe  and  America 
supplement  their  human,  by  six  times  its  force,  in  steam  labor-power. —  This 
power  doubled  again  by  machinery,  and  constant!}7  enhancing,  beyond  com 
putation. —  Velocity  gained  equals  the  force  thus  commanded. — The  mastery 
obtained  over  masses  of  matter. — Greater  still  over  elements  and  atoms. — Prac 
tical  application  follows  closely  upon  our  discoveries  in  the  laws  of  matter. — 
Abundance  and  cheapness  of  production  supply  an  ample  stock  of  provisions 
for  the  wants  of  men. — Effects  of  the  growth  of  wealth  on  the  products  of 
handicraft  in  dead  matter. — Advancement  in  agricultural  production. — In 
crease  in  everything  except  food,  unlimited. — Consumption  of  food  like  its 
possibilities  of  supply,  limited. — The  despair  of  the  "  Dismal"  School. — General 
answer. — Famines  and  plagues  disappear  in  the  ratio  that  men  increase  in 
number. — Irish  and  Indian  famines  of  the  present  centuries  accounted  for. — 
Exclusively  agricultural  countries  alone  exposed  to  starvation. — Why. — The 
provision  for  food  products  adequate,  and  therefore  practically  unlimited. — 
Not  ten  per  cent  of  the  soil's  capabilities  yet  mastered. — Human  destitution  no 
impeachment  of  the  providence  and  liberality  of  nature's  provision  for  human 
wants. — The  laws  of  nature  tend  to  adjustment  of  man  and  earth. — Due  culti 
vation  does  not  exhaust,  but  increases  the  soil's  fertility. — Contributions  of 
foreign  commerce  to  subsistence. — England  draws  four-fifths,  in  value,  of  the 
raw  material  of  her  exported  productf  from  foreign  countries. — Legitimate 
foreign  trade  insures  the  needed  supplies  of  the  oldest  countries. — Relief 
from  emigration. — Space  in  the  new  answers  to  needs  in  the  old  world. — 
Room  enough  still  in  Europe. — Abundance  in  reserve  for  seven  times  the 
present  population  of  the  globe. — Economists,  handicraftsmen,  and  horses 
getting  over  their  scare  at  the  prospective  destitution. — Compensations  in  re 
serve  when  customary  reliances  fail. — Substitution  of  the  abundant  and  cheap 
for  the  scarce  and  dear. — Civilization  finds  the  means  of  human  subsistence 
ever  more  and  more  abundant  and  accessible. — Sparseness  of  savage  popula 
tions  and  failure  of  their  supplies. — Diversified  industry  a  sure  defense  against 
famine. — In  progressive  communities  vegetable  supplants  animal  food. — Pro 
portion  of  their  respective  yield. — Economy  of  a  vegetable  diet  among  ani 
mals. — Progress  from  the  animal,  through,  the  vegetable  to  the  mineral  king 
dom,  in  the  supplies  of  advancing  civilization. — The  Laborers'  opportunity 
grows  pari  passu  through  all  this  progress. — Last  of  all  man  advances  to  the 
*  53 


54  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

command  of  the  imponderables. — Instances  of  the  substitutions  which  mark 
human  progress,  and  provide  for  it. — The  Industrial  liberty  of  nations,  like 
the  emancipation  of  men  from  the  despotism  of  the  elements,  comes  from,  and 
is  proportioned  to,  their  control  over  nature's  forces. — Industrial  and  political 
revolutions  have  their  roots  in  the  bosom  of  mother  earth. 

THE  sources  of  advancement  in  wealth  are,  in  general  statement : 
1st.  Increase  of  labor-saving  machinery;  2d.  Substitution  of  arti 
ficial  for  natural  labor;  3d.  Improvement  in  the  quantity  and 
quality  of  commodities;  4th.  Advancement  in  agricultural  produc 
tion  ;  5th.  Improvement  in  transportation ;  6th.  Extension  of  for 
eign  trade;  7th.  Substitution  of  the  cheap  and  abundant  for  the 
costly  and  scarce. 

In  some  of  these  things  the  achievements  of  human  art,  and 
the  prospective  improvements  well  assured,  have  converted  the 
fictions  of  magic,  of  our  old  story-books,  into  the  facts  of  every-day 
experience.  The  magic  carpet  and  Aladdin's  lamp  seem  now  but  a 
prophesy  of  the  wonders  which  science  and  art  are  accomplishing 
for  us. 

In  the  conversion  and  transportation  of  the  materials  which  serve 
our  needs,  and  which  must  undergo  changes  of  form  and  place 
before  they  are  utilized,  the  forces  of  nature  stand  in  resistance  to 
those  of  man.  The  earths  and  minerals  which  compose  the  solid 
globe,  serve  men  no  further  or  better  than  they  do  the  inferior 
animals  until  they  are  transformed  and  subdued  into  use,  and  their 
resistance  to  change  of  place  is  overcome.  Their  unserviceable 
forms  and  properties  in  the  natural  state,  and  their  fixity  of  local 
position,  call  for  force  and  speed  to  establish  our  dominion  over  them. 
Something  akin  to  the  miraculous,  something  swper-natural,  must  be 
arrayed  against  this  natural  to  bring  it  into  obedience.  In  the 
"  mechanical  powers "  we  have  it  in  the  screw,  the  compound 
pulley,  and  the  wheel  and  axle.  Nowhere  in  nature  are  either  of 
these  found.  Nature  has  the  lever  and  the  inclined  plane,  with  the 
force  of  gravitation,  and  that  modification  of  it  which  is  called  cohe 
sion,  but  these  only  in  common  with  man  and  his  instruments, 
which  in  a  thousand  instances  serve  as  successful  antagonists  to  the 
like  forces  of  dead  matter.  Where  the  artificial  lever  is  inadequate, 
the  screw  and  the  pulley  win  an  easy  victory ;  and  with  the  wheel 
and  axle,  men  out-run  the  bird  on  the  wing,  and  out-swim  the  fish 
in  the  seas,  carrying  mountain-weights  with  a  rapidity  that  over- 


WEALTH — SOURCES    OF    GROWTH.  55 

coincs  all  that  is  substantial  in  the  resistance  of  Space ;  while  Time 
in  travel  and  transportation,  for  all  the  purposes  of  communication, 
is  effectively  subdued  by  the  apparatus  of  the  electric  telegraph  and 
the  force  of  steam  and  machinery.  In  respect  to  force — the  force 
of  man  against  that  of  nature — there  can  be  no  lack  when  four  tons 
of  coal  in  a  steam  engine  will  evolve  as  much  mechanical  power  as 
an  ordinary  man  can  exert,  working  eight  hours  a  day,  for  twenty 
years,  or,  one  ton  of  coal  has  in  it  a  fifteen  hundred  man-power  for 
their  work  of  one  day. 

Great  Britain  raised  from  her  mines,  in  the  year  1864,  ninety-two 
millions  of  tons  j  she  exported  to  foreign  countries  but  nine  millions, 
and  if  she  employed  but  forty  of  the  remaining  eighty-three  millions 
in  producing  artificial  labor-power,  she  got  out  of  it  the  equivalent 
of  two  hundred  millions  of  men's  work  in  the  year.  Two  years 
afterwards,  in  1866,  she  mined  one  hundred  and  one  thousand  tons 
of  coal,  and  if  she  used  fifty  thousand  tons  of  this  quantity  in  the 
same  way,  then  she  derived  from  it  the  labor-force  of  two  hundred 
and  fifty  millions  of  able-bodied  men,  which,  by  the  ordinary  com 
putation,  is  about  equal  to  that  of  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  globe. 
This,  for  an  island  numbering  twenty-five  millions  of  people,  all 
told,  is  a  stupendous  force.  And  when  we  add  to  it  two-thirds  of 
this  quantity,  similarly  used  in  the  rest  of  Europe  and  the  United 
States,  we  have  an  aggregate  population  of  about  two  hundred  and 
eighty  millions,  less  than  one-half  of  whom  are  in  the  producing 
class,  between  fifteen  and  sixty  years  of  age,  and  the  one-half  of 
these  only  are  males.  So  that  considerably  under  seventy  millions 
of  men's  labor  is  supplemented  by  an  artificial  force  derived  from 
coal,  equal  to  that  of  about  four  hundred  and  ten  millions  of  man 
power,  or,  the  mass  of  laborers  in  Europe  and  the  United  States 
had  the  help  of  six  times  their  power  added  to  their  own  in  doing 
their  allotted  work.  That  is,  they,  with  the  aid  of  the  steam-power 
of  coal,  were  doing  nearly  twice  the  work  that  the  whole  population 
of  the  earth  could  do  without  it.  Nor  would  it  be  too  much  to  say 
that  this  force  was  again  doubled  by  the  intervention  of  machinery 
in  steam  works,  and  in  its  employment  where  water  is  the  agent, 
and  where  human  force  is  multiplied  in  effect  through  the  instru 
mentality  of  the  mechanical  powers,  as  they  are  technically  called. 
Indeed,  estimates  and  computation  fail  to  grasp  the  effective  value  of 
the  adjuvants  that  human  ingenuity  employs  to  enhance  its  mastery 


66  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

of  matter.  And  as  a  source  of  wealth  to  the  civilized  world,  it  will 
be  felt  that  this  compelling  power  over  inanimate  things  is  in  a 
constant  and  rapid  state  of  enhancement,  growing  day  by  day,  until 
it  outstrips  the  limits  of  calculation,  and  the  mind  no  longer  defi 
nitely  comprehends  the  ever-swelling  magnitude,  just  as  it  fails  to 
comprehend  the  indefinite  ever  advancing  toward  the  infinite. 

The  amount  of  mechanical  force  thus  growing  into  the  unlimited, 
in  weight,  is  matched  by  the  velocity  of  motion  gained,  which,  while 
still  computable,  is  scarcely  conceivable  in  shuttles,  hammers,  rollers 
and  wheels.  Steam  and  machinery  give  us  many  hundred-fold 
rapidity  in  printing,  spinning,  and  weaving  over  the  old  hand-press, 
wheel,  and  loom.*  In  transportation  of  men  and  commodities  they 
have  afforded  us  fifteen  miles  on  the  ocean,  and  fifty  on  land,  to  the 
hour;  overcoming  the  resistance  of  wind  and  wave  on  the  one,  and 
the  greatest  mountain  masses  on  the  other.  Some  idea  of  this  ser 
vice  is  given  in  the  railroad  reports  of  England.  In  1866  her 
trains  on  less  than  half  (thirteen  thousand  two  hundred  and  eighty- 
nine  miles)  the  length  of  track  in  the  United  States  transported  a 
number  of  passengers  equal  to  one  quarter  (two  hundred  and  fifty- 
two  millions)  of  the  population  of  the  globe,  and  carried  one  hun 
dred  and  forty  millions  of  tons  weight  of  men  and  things,  one 
hundred  and  thirty-four  millions  of  miles — a  distance  equal  to  that 
from  the  earth  to  the  sun,  and  half  way  back  again. 

These  are  but  hints  of  the  command  we  are  to  have  over  matter 
in  masses,  and  over  time  and  space,  in  the  work  of  conversion  and 
transportation. 

Over  its  elements  and  atoms  mind  is  achieving  control  still 
greater  and  more  wonderful.  The  incantations  of  chemistry  set 
free  the  hidden  forces  and  agencies  of  the  creation,  and  rehearse 
the  miracles  of  incessant  new  creations,  changing  the  forms  and  uses 
of  all  material  things,  and  informing  them  with  life  and  action  in 
the  service  of  the  living  world.  The  solid  rocks,  the  winds,  the 
waters,  the  latent  fires  of  the  great  store- house  of  forces  provided 

*  The  increased  economy  and  power  obtained  in  the  application  of  some  kinds 
of  machinery  will  be  apparent  from  the  following  statement,  the  result  of  accurate 
calculation  :  Richard  Qarsed,  Esq.,  of  Frankford,  Pennsylvania,  manufactures,  in 
every  day  of  ten  hours,  thirty-three  thousand  miles  of  cotton  thread — obtaining 
from  seven  tons  of  coal  the  necessary  power.  Supposing  it  possible  for  such 
quality  of  thread  to  be  made  by  hand,  it  would  require  the  labor  of  seventy 
thousand  women  to  accomplish  this  work. 


WEALTH — SOURCES    OF    GROWTH.  57 

for  our  service,  are  compelled  to  take  all  shapes  of  use  at  the  bid 
ding  of  the  spirit  which  masters  their  mysteries ;  and,  what  is  most 
remarkable  in  the  present  age,  and  most  promising  for  the  oncoming 
generations,  is  the  practical  application  which  follows  closely  upon 
the  heels  of  discovery.  Franklin  (in  1752)  put  his  electric  toy  to 
duty  in  guarding  our  habitations  from  the  thunder-bolt;  and  Morse 
(in  1832),  before  a  generation  had  past  after  the  discovery  of  gal 
vanism  (G-alvaui,  1791,  Volta,  1801,)  subdued  this  subtlest  of 
nature's  agents  to  service  in  the  electric  telegraph;  and  now,  in  less 
than  thirty-six  years  more,  it  has  triumphed  over  the  last  impedi 
ments  which  the  oceans  interposed  to  the  instant  communication  of 
the  whole  earth. 

Handicraft,  which  in  the  last  hundred  years  has  kept  close  com 
pany  with  the  rapidest  revelations  of  science  fulfills  its  commission, 
"  fixing  firm  in  enduring  forms  the  creative  essence  which  lives  and 
works  through  all  time,  and  hovers  in  changeful  seeming  till  made 
firm  by  enduring  thought."  (Goethe,  prolog.  Faust.)  Material 
forces,  under  the  direction  of  machinery,  grow  as  light-limbed  and 
strong-handed  as  the  thought  which  they  realize.  Machinery  be 
comes  bone  and  muscle  to  the  brain  and  nerve  of  science;  and  dead 
matter  answers  in  all  its  aptitudes  to  the  mind  of  man. 

From  the  union  of  knowledge  with  practical  genius,  physical 
power  has  made  such  progress,  and  trained  so  many,  and  such 
stupendous  natural  forces  into  our  service,  and  all  this  so  re 
cently  and  rapidly,  that  we  still  look  forward  to  a  yet  further  and 
vaster  increase  in  the  apparatus  of  production,  and  to  a  correspond 
ing  abundance  and  cheapness;  and  through  that  abundance  and 
cheapness  to  an  ever-broadening  diffusion  of  benefits  and  blessings. 

This  is  what  best  describes  and  defines  the  increase  of  the  general 
or  aggregate  wealth :  Men  ever  better  and  better  provided  with  the 
commodities  which  sustain  their  animal  life;  with  the  luxuries, 
which  refine  it;  with  an  ever  enlarging  release  from  drudgery, 
which  liberates  it,  and,  with  the  opportunities  and  inducements, 
thence  resulting,  for  elevating  it  to  its  noblest  uses  and  highest 
possibilities. 

ADVANCEMENT    IN    AGRICULTURAL    PRODUCTION. 

Agriculture  differs  from  manufactures  in  not  being  capable  of 
absolutely  indefinite  expansion.     This  is  true  in  the  literal  mean- 
5 


58  QUESTIONS    OF    TLLE    DAY. 

ing  of  the  words;  but  writers  of  the  dismal  school  give  the  truism 
much  more  force  in  application  than  it  is  entitled  to.  The 
multiplication  in  quantity,  and  improvement  in  quality,  of  all 
things,  except  food,  which  is  clearly  possible,  is  by  an  allowable 
hyperbole  unlimited.  Busy  as  a  nailer,  was  once  a  proverb,  be 
cause  he  must  hammer  out  a  nail  at  a  single  heat,  and  had  not  a 
moment  to  spare,  but  now  a  boy  may  be  seen  making  more  than 
fifty  in  a  minute,  while  at  leisure  to  read  a  book  held  in  his  unoccu 
pied  hand.  A  hundred  years  ago  England  consumed  one  yard  of 
muslin  per  head  per  annum,  but  before  our  great  domestic  conflict 
it  was  plenty  enough  and  cheap  enough  there  for  the  inhabitants 
to  consume  an  average  of  thirty  yards;  arid  so  of  a  multitude 
of  other  commodities  which  a  better  state  of  things  in  the  new 
age  has  made  necessaries  of  life.  But  food,  unless  it  be  of  fish,  is 
much  more  limited  in  supply  and  accessibility.  Its  production  and 
consumption  cannot  be  expanded  in  any  tolerable  approach  to  the 
possible  of  textile  fabrics,'  or  metals,  in  their  infinitely  various 
forms  of  use.  This,  however,  must  not  be  forgotten  :  though  the 
number  of  consumers  is  the  same,  the  quantity  of  food  demanded, 
has  vastly  narrower  limits. 

Population,  we  are  told  by  the  Malthus  school  of  economists, 
goes  on  increasing,  in  favorable  conditions,  in  a  compound  ratio, 
and  the  food -yield  from  the  soil  at  best  only  by  simple  addition; 
and  still  worse,  after  a  certain  stage  of  culture  is  reached,  all  addi 
tional  product  is  at  an  increasing  cost  of  labor  and  capital — the 
process  of  exhaustion  all  the  while  advancing — and  these  general 
abstract  propositions  are  rigorously  pressed  into  the  service  of  unbe 
lief  in  the  harmonies  of  the  things  which  most  nearly  concern  the 
welfare  of  men. 

As  a  general  answer,  it  is  to  be  noticed  that,  in  point  of  fact, 
and  directly  to  the  point  of  this  assertion,  famines,  and  the  plagues 
attendant  on  them,  have  disappeared  in  modern  times  and  under 
modern  civilization,  in  the  direct  proportion  that  population  has  in 
creased.  Particular  and  comparatively  small  districts  sometimes 
suffer  now,  but  these  are  always  the  grossly-misgoverned  or  bar 
barously-cultivated  portions  of  the  civilized  world.  No  famine  or 
resulting  plague,  and  no  instances  of  very  great  scarcity,  have 
visited  Europe  within  the  present  century;  but  in  increasing  num 
bers  and  severity,  as  we  go  back  towards  the  earliest  ages  of  Chris- 


WEALTH — SOURCES    OF    GROWTH.  59 

tianity,  they  crowd  the  chronological  registers  of  important  events 
in  human  history.  In  Ireland,  indeed,  with  fifteen  millions  of 
arable  acres,  and  ten  millions  of  that  in  pasture,  the  mass  of  the 
population,  confined  for  food  to  a  single  root,  which,  under  the 
pressure  of  necessity,  is  stimulated  into  disease,  while  the  flocks 
and  herds  go  to  a  distant  market  for  the  landlord's  profit,  famines 
and  deficiencies  in  food  are  still  lingering  long  after  happier  lands 
have  found  a  nearly 'complete  exemption.  Ireland,  under  the  con 
ditions  ^which  she  still  suffers,  cannot  be  blamed  with  infertility,  or 
failure  of  ability  to  feed  her  people.  India  is  still  frequently  visited 
by  famines,  also;  but,  is  it  surprising,  if  the  richest  soil  of  the  world 
fails  to  yield  its  harvests,  when  the  rule  of  the  foreigner,  or  what 
ever  else  the  cause,  has  restored  the  jungles  of  tropical  luxuriance 
to  the  old  garden  grounds  of  the  Deccan,  and  tiger  hunts  are  the 
pastimes  in  spots  which  still  retain  the  vestiges  of  demolished 
cities?  Shall  mother  eartfy  be  made  ashamed  that  she  sickens  and 
withers  under  such  abuses  ? 

In  the  northeast  of  Prussia  we  have  lately  heard  of  scarcity 
approaching  absolute  destitution ;  but  such  instances  as  this,  and 
others  like  it,  occurring  in  districts  surrounded  by  abundance, 
have  this  lesson  to  teach  the  teachers  of  Political  Economy  and 
the  governors  of  states :  famines  now  never  occur  except  in  regions 
exclusively  devoted  to  the  production  of  food  ;  and.  that  a  duly 
diversified  industry  is  an  insurance  against  them.  The  crop  of  one 
year,  however  abundant,  never  suffices  for  itself  and  the  next  fol 
lowing,  and  if  that  of  the  last  greatly  fails,  starvation  must  follow, 
for  all  of  the  labor  of  the  paople  fails  of  its  returns,  and  they  have 
no  current  products  wherewith  to  purchase  supplies.  Nine  hundred 
of  every  thousand  people,  in  any  country,  must  starve  if  a  whole 
year's  earnings  are  cut  off. 

Let  us  admit  the  limited  acreage  of  the  fertile  soil  of  the  world; 
let  us  admit  even  the  temporary  exhaustibility  of  the  soil  under 
destructive  modes  of  cultivation,  and,  that  the  earth  will  not  long 
bear  the  robber-system  of  harvesting  its  generous  tribute ;  and 
then,  we  turn  to  the  despondents  and  reply :  what,  though  neither 
land  nor  its  products  are  in  themselves  unlimited,  are  they,  there 
fore,  not  under  natural  law  sufficient,  more  than  sufficient,  and 
so,  in  reference  to  the  demand,  practically  unlimited  ?  The  thou 
sand  millions  of  its  human  inhabitants  have  not  yet  conquered 


60  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

ten  per  cent  of  the  earth's  capabilities  for  their  service,  even  if 
a  few  garden  spots  may  have  reached  the  limit  of  their  strength; 
but  what  is  more  to  the  purpose  :  if  the  race  is  still  brutal  in  its 
fecundity,  resulting  entirely  from  the  domination  of  the  animal  over 
the  moral  and  mental  faculties,  and  is  a  nuisance  among  the  fair 
and  orderly  works  of  creation,  may  she  not  reject  them  as  she  did 
the  reptiles  of  the  old  geologic  ages,  without  impeachment  of  her 
providence  and  liberality  ? 

We  are  thinking  of  the  laws,  not  of  the  abuses  of  human  life 
and  its  dependencies  j  and  in  those  laws  we  see  a  constant  effort  in 
correction  of  those  abuses,  and  an  assured  promise  of  an  ultimate 
adjustment.  But  this  still  allows  much  evil  and  suffering  in  the 
present  and  immediate  future !  Not  a  whit  more  suffering  than 
sin ;  and  we  cannot  even  imagine  a  system  of  existence  in  which 
wrong  shall  get  along  as  well  as  right.  To  have  men  live  well  in 
error  and  evil  is  a  gross  violation  of  order  and  law,  and  would  require 
that  the  system  of  the  universe  should  be  changed  from  the  divinely 
right  into  conformity,  if  that  were  possible,  with  the  rebellious  evil 
which  assails  and  defies  it. 

It  is  well  to  speak  strongly  on  this  subject,  for,  whether  any  pres 
ent  good  shall  result  or  not,  it  is  much  to  have  a  sound  faith  and 
confidence  in  the  laws  of  Providence.  If  we  have  an  eternity  for 
thought  and  feeling  before  us,  a  sustaining  hope  will  go  along  with 
the  study,  and  there  will  be  the  good  cheer  of  a  better  day  coming, 
.as  the  motive  and  the  reward  of  benevolent  endeavor. 

But  we  can  rest  our  argument  securely  upon  experience  and 
« observation,  seen  in  the  light  which  the  ends  and  issues  of  all  things 
o-eflect  upon  the  processes  by  which  they  must  be  attained. 

In  point  of  fact  the  productiveness  of  all  the  old  countries  which 
Tiave  any  degree  of  prosperity  is  in  a  constant  and  rapid  increase, 
far  outstripping  the  demand  for  sustenance.  They  are  growing 
rich  upon  their  surplus. 

The  food  of  France  increased  three  times  in  the  eighty  years 
from  17GO  to  1840.  In  the  period  of  1820  to  1860  it  doubled, 
that  is,  it  is  now  increasing  at  the  rate  of  four-fold  in  eighty  years 
against  three-fold  in  the  earlier  period  named ;  and  this  with  a  popu 
lation  nearly  stationary  and  in  an  area  of  the  same  extent.  She  is 
a  very  large  exporter  of  food.  Age  has  not  lessened  her  fertility. 
Its  tendency  under  a  due  system  of  cultivation  is  always  in  the 


WEALTH — SOURCES    OF    GROWTH.  61 

opposite  direction.  The  Mediterranean  wheat,  which  makes  such 
a  figure  in  commerce  is  grown  on  the  oldest  cultivated  soil  in  Europe 
and  Africa. 

English  authors  of  authority  claim  that  the  usual  crop  of  wheat 
in  the  United  Kingdom  is  thirty  bushels  to  the  acre.  The  United 
States  Agricultural  Bureau  puts  our  crops  at  from  twelve  to  thir 
teen  bushels  per  acre.  Here  the  oldest  country  considerably  more: 
than  doubles  the  newest  in  its  average  yield. 

CONTRIBUTIONS    OF   INTERNATIONAL   TRADE. 

Improvement  in  the  methods  of  cultivation,  and  the  resulting 
enhancement  of  the  product  of  soils  long  under  tillage  in  the  older 
countries,  are  not  the  only  means  and  sources  of  increasing  and 
cheapening  the  necessary  supplies  of  their  people.  The  coloniza 
tion  of,  and  COMMERCE  with  new  countries,  and  the  contributions 
which  they  are  made  to  yield,  afford  a  grand  increase  of  the  means 
of  subsistence  to  the  participating  communities.  For  instance,  the 
exports  of  cottons  from  England  grew  at  a  two-fold  rate  in  the 
decade  ending  in  1860  over  that  of  1840-50,  constituting  full 
three-eighths  of  the  value  of  all  her  domestic  exports  in  the  year 
1860  (52  m.  £  of  135.8  m.  £),  while  her  iron,  steel,  cutlery,  and 
other  manufactures  of  iron  and  steel,  of  which  she  had  at  home  all 
the  raw  material  ami  agents  of  conversion,  amounted  to  no  more 
than  eleven  and  six-tenths  per  cent  (15.9  m.  £),  or  less  than  one- 
eighth  of  the  whole.  Her  imports  of  raw  material  used  in  the  manu 
facture  of  cottons,  silks,  and  woolens,  that  year  (I860)  were  valued  at 
forty-seven  and  a  half  millions  pounds.  Their  export  value  reached 
seventy-five  millions,  which,  with  twenty  million  pounds'  worth  con 
sumed  at  home,  gave  her  quite  two  hundred  and  thirty-eight  millions 
dollars  of  difference  in  the  exchange.  These  three  manufactures, 
founded  upon  foreign  raw  materials,  gave  employment  to  seven 
hundred  thousand  laborers,  whose  wages  supported  nearly  three 
millions  of  her  population,  and  yielded  a  profit  of,  say,  fifteen  mil 
lions  of  pounds  to  her  capitalists  (sixteen  per  cent  upon  the  value  of 
the  products).  It  is  probable  that  the  United  Kingdom  does  not 
supply  more  than  the  one-fifth  in  value  of  the  materials  (exclusive 
of  the  labor)  of  her  usual  exports.  If  so,  foreign  commerce  gives- 
her  four-fifths  of  the  raw  stock  of  her  multifarious  foreign  exports^ 


62  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

The  United  Kingdom  has  risen  from  one  and  a  half  to  six 
thousand  millions  of  pounds  in  capital  wealth  since  the  United 
States  sent  the  first  cotton  to  her  looms  (in  1790),  and,  as  has  been 
already  stated,  this  single  article  has  risen  to  the  value  of  three- 
eighths  of  the  exports  of  British  manufactures. 

All  the  older  countries  have  in  this  species  of  commerce  sources 
of  industrial  profit,  and  supplies  of  sustenance  before  them,  for  as 
long  a  period  as  philanthropy  or  patriotism  need  wish.  Even 
when  international  exchanges  shall  be  limited  to  trade  in  the  unlike 
products  of  differing  climates,  as  it  eventually  must  be.  the  reci 
procities  natural  and,  therefore,  stable  and  enduring,  will  still  be 
ample  in  their  contributions  to  the  welfare  of  all  parties. 

While  the  social  disorder  and  misgovern rnent  of  the  nations  of 
Western  Europe  continue  to  bear  hardly  upon  the  mass  of  the 
peoples,  the  colonization  of  new  countries  will,  in  an  important  de 
gree,  abate  the  evils  of  disproportion  between  men  and  their  current 
means  of  support,  at  present  existing.  For  this  purpose  full  four- 
fifths  of  the  habitable  idobe  is  still  new.  Europe  has  now  less 
than  sixty-five  persons  to  the  square  mile.  This  number  does  not 
task  the  one-third  of  its  capabilities  at  home;  and  America,  that 
has  but  three  and  a  half,  is  capable  of  an  average  of  at  least  two 
hundred.  When  these  two  quarters  of  the  globe  shall  have  their 
highest  probable  population  in  A.  D.  1900,  there  will  be  ample 
room  in  them  for  nineteen  times  as  many  as  they  will  have,  or 
for  seven  times  the  total  present  population  of  the  known  world. 
Without  calculating  the  waiting  capabilities  of  Asia,  Africa,  and 
Oceanica  for  the  multitudes  which  they  can  and  will,  in  the  advanc 
ing  order  of  the  earth's  occupation  and  use,  entertain  and  sustain, 
there  is  in  the  vacancies  of  Europe  and  America  ample  room  and 
verge  enough  for  a  future  so  extended,  that  we  might  as  well  under 
take  to  forecast  the  arrangements  of  the  millennium,  as  to  concern 
ourselves  with  the  provision  for  the  existence  of  the  men  that 
shall  come  after  the  globe  is  averagely  inhabited  and  tolerably  well 
subdued  to  the  dominion  of  man. 

Distressing  apprehensions  for  the  future  of  mankind  are  not 
new;  but  it  is  comparatively  new  for  science  to  become  hypochon- 
driacal.  It  must  be  because  political  economy  is  itself  so  new  that 
it  breaks  its  heart  over  the  foolish  fears  of  infancy;  it  has  not  yet 
cut  its  wisdom  teeth. 


WEALTH — SOURCES    OF   GROWTH.  63 

Tn  the  memory  of  the  present  generation,  the  general  and  rapidly 
increasing  substitution  of  machinery  and  steam  power  for  hand- 
labor,  threatened  the  displacement  and  the  starvation  of  the  toiling 
multitudes,  and  good  people  stood  aghast  at  the  prospect  when  they 
saw  one  man  doing  the  work  of  fifty.  The  laborers  themselves 
looked  upon  the  wonder-working  machines,  much  as  an  untrained 
horse  regards  a  locomotive  engine,  frightened  by  the  apprehension 
that  his  "  occupation's  gone."  The  results,  however,  seem  to  be 
reconciling  both  man  and  beast.  They  have  both  improved  greatly 
in  quality  and  numbers,  and  they  both  in  some  vague  way  are  be 
ginning  to  understand  the  situation.  In  like  manner,  our  grand 
mothers  looked  forward  to  dreadful  things,  before  fossil  coal  came 
into  use  for  fuel,  for  the  time  rapidly  advancing  when  the  forests 
should  be  utterly  exhausted.  Even  John  Stuart  Mill  gave  voice 
in  parliament  in  the  spring  of  1866,  to  a  statistical  scare  over  the 
near  exhaustion  of  the  English  coal  mines,  and  urged  the  early  pay 
ment  of  the  British  debt  in  anticipation  of  the  utter  bankruptcy  of 
the  nation  ;  that  they  might  be  able  when  the  worst  should  come. 
to  say,  all  is  lost  but  honor.  When  the  American  Rebellion  cut  off 
the  Northern  States  from  the  turpentine  supply  of  North  Carolina, 
and  the  whale  fisheries  were  showing  signs  of  decay,  trade  in  all  its 
branches  which  had  depended  upon  these  resources,  gave  signs  of 
woe;  but  then  the  petroleum  rivers  overflowed,  and  the  lubricated 
wheels  of  business  rolled  smoothly  again;  and  one  other  world's 
catastrophe  was  escaped. 

By  way  of  a  short  cut  to  the  conclusion,  we  may  be  allowed  to 
suggest  that,  if  England  and  France  have  survived  their  crimes  and 
follies;  if  they  are  recovering  from  the  insanities  of  centuries,  and 
have  taken  a  fresh  start  in  business,  no  other  people  need  fear  the 
fates.  The  decadence  of  the  civilized  nations  that  are  disposed  to 
behave  themselves  as  well  as  they  can,  is  sheer  nonsense. 

SUBSTITUTION    OF    THE    ABUNDANT    AND  CHEAP   FOR    THE    SCARCE 
AND    DEAR    IN    THE    SUPPORT    OF    MEN. 

Besides  the  increase  of  labor-saving  machinery ;  the  substitution 
of  artificial  for  natural  labor;  improvement  in  travel  and  transpor 
tation  ;  a  vast  increase  in  the  quality  and  quantity  of  manufactured 
commodities;  the  rapidly  growing  yield  of  agriculture,  both  by 


64  QUESTIONS    OF    THE   DAY. 

improved  cultivation  and  extension  of  territory  for  such  use ;  the 
abundant  aid  of  commerce  in  distributing  the  materials  and  the 
products  of  skilled  industry  legitimately  exchanged ;  and  the  almost 
miraculous  helps  of  the  natural  sciences  in  extending  the  dominion 
of  man  over  the  subordinate  creation  on  which  he  depends  for  his 
earthly  welfare,  there  is  still  another  source  of  prosperity  worthy  of 
as  much  weight  in  the  scale  of  our  argument  as  either  of  these. 

Within  a  few  years  gas  of  mineral  origin  has  been  substituted  for 
animal  oil  for  producing  artificial  light  in  all  the  cities,  and  in  every 
thriving  borough  in  the  country ;  beet  sugar  and  sorghum,  which 
grow  abundantly  in  the  temperate  climate,  for  the  product  of  the 
cane,  which  requires  a  semi-tropical  temperature;  roots  which  yield 
by  the  ton,  for  grain  that  multiplies  only  by  the  bushel  for  the  food 
of  men  and  the  feed  of  domestic  animals ;  mineral  oils  have  opened 
up  from  the  interior  of  the  earth  in  rivers,  to  replace  vegetable  and 
animal  oils  requiring  so  much  of  the  surface  soil  to  afford  an  ade 
quate  supply  'j  and  manufactures  have  by  their  ever  growing  abun 
dance  and  cheapness  come  to  supply  and  displace  a  very  large  per 
centage  of  food,  which  a  greater  waste  of  animal  heat  formerly 
required :  aye,  all  the  modern  defenses  against  atmospheric  cold  are 
the  equivalents  of  so  much  food  in  sustaining  human  life.  Our 
clothing  and  our  better  habitations  are  worth  half  the  food  consumed 
in  ages  gone  by  for  the  maintenance  of  a  comfortable  temperature 
and  health  of  body.  By  these  ameliorations  the  average  life  of  a 
generation  has  been  extended  from  thirty-three  to  forty  years  since 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century. 

In  another  and  broader  view,  our  proposition  may  be  seen  in 
convincing  clearness,  thus :  In  savage  conditions  men  are  robbers 
of  the  earth,  and  victims  of  the  elements.  They  gather  the  forest 
fruits  in  their  season,  hunt  the  air  and  earth  and  waters  for  their 
food,  and  suffer  all  the  privations  of  improvidence.  A  thousand 
acres  scarcely  suffice  for  the  support  of  one  man,  and  these  he  soon 
exhausts,  and  is  soon  exhausted  in  his  turn.  When  William  Penu 
lauded  on  the  Delaware,  there  were  not  more  than  twenty-five  thou 
sand  Indians  from  the  Potomac  to  the  chain  of  the  northern  lakes, 
and  from  Connecticut  to  the  Allegheny  River.  There  are  eleven 
millions  of  men  now,  or  four  hundred  and  forty  times  that  number. 
In  the  pastoral  state  the  culture  of  cattle  commences,  and  some 
sort  of  agriculture  is  introduced ;  but  famines  frequently  occur,  and 


WEALTH — SOURCES    OF    GROWTH.  65^ 

the  children  of  Israel  must  go  into  slavery  in  Egypt  for  an  assured 
supply  of  corn — a  barbarous  civilization  purchases  the  birthright 
of  Jacob  for  a  mess  of  pottage,  as  he  had  bought  Esau's  at  the  same 
price.  Low  as  it  is,  this  stage  is  an  advancement  in  the  supply 
and  security  of  life.  Semi-civilization  becomes  so  far  forth  master 
of  its  own  fortunes,  and  owners  of  the  service  of  their  inferiors. 
This  results  necessarily  from  the  law  that  determines  the  conditions 
of  society  in  every  stage  of  progress.  "  Be  fruitful,  and  multiply, 
and  replenish  the  earth,  and  subdue  it,"  is  the  commission  and  the 
means  of  securing  the  promise  it  contains. 

Let  us  look,  briefly,  at  the  workings  of  the  policy,  in  the  processes 
employed  for  obtaining  command  of  the  earth's  services  in  progress 
ive  improvements  of  human  life. 

The  vegetable  kingdom,  which  yields,  some  thirty,  some  sixty, 
and  some  an  hundred-fold,  is  first  drawn  upon  for  its  supplies. 
Animal  food  begins  to  be  supplanted,  immensely  reduced  in  the 
temperate  regions,  and  dispensed  with  in  the  tropical,  with  gains 
proportionate  to  its  reduction.  Exclusive  animal  food,  where  pastur 
age  and  feed  must  be  used  in  its  production,  requires  ten  or  twelve 
acres  cultivated  land  to  grow  the  flesh  diet  of  one  man  for  one  year  ] 
one  acre  of  wheat  will  support  three  persons — affording  thirty-six 
times  as  much  sustenance.  One  acre  of  potatoes  will  support  nine 
persons — equal  to  one  hundred  and  eight  times  the  food  yielded 
from  the  same  extent  of  soil  in  flesh  meat.  In  this  ratio,  advanced 
agriculture  multiplies  the  means  of  subsistence,  by  this  process  of 
substitution,  and  in  proportion,  by  all  mixtures  of  these  substances 
used  for  food.  Even  in  the  inferior  races  we  have  a  good  illustra 
tion  of  the  economy  of  a  vegetable  over  an  animal  diet.  The  lion, 
tiger,  bear,  and  other  carnivorous  beasts  multiply  slowly,  while  the 
vegetable  eaters — the  horse,  ox,  and  buffalo  multiply  immensely; 
they  go  in  herds,  while  the  ravagers  of  the  living  things  roam  alone 
in  the  solitudes  which  they  make. 

In  apparel,  as  necessary  to  the  life  of  the  more  advanced  classes 
of  men  as  food  itself,  and  equally  expensive,  the  vegetable  flax  and 
cotton  displace  a  vast  amount  of  wool  which  would  otherwise  be 
required.  One  acre  of  ground  will  produce  as  much  of  value  in 
textile  fabrics  made  of  these,  as  a  hundred  acres  will  yield  in  the 
wool  of  sheep. 

But  it  is   not  only  from  the  animal  world  to   the  vegetable  that 


66  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

man  proceeds  iii  the  multiplication  of  his  means  of  life — from  the 
beasts  that  roam  over  the  earth,  through  the  cereals  that  grow 
above  it,  to  the  roots  nourished  in  its  bosom,  with  increasing  plenty 
at  each  stage  in  the  descent.  He  stops  not  here',  but  deeper  still  he 
finds  the  richest  repository  of  his  resources  in  the  bowels  of  the 
planet.  The  mineral  kingdom,  with  its  exhaustless  stores,  are  next 
opened  for  his  use.  And  it  is  a  striking  fact  that  labor,  the  only 
capital  of  the  masses,  who  most  need  that  their  condition  shall  be 
leveled  up  to  competency,  and  thence  forward  toward  the  luxu 
ries  that  refine,  enlarge,  and  ennoble  the  life  of  man,  through  all 
this  progress  from  the  scarce  and  costly,  to  the  abundant  and  cheap, 
shall  be  more  and  more  in  demand  for  the  work  of  the  world,  and 
will  derive  from  it  an  ever  increasing  share  of  its  products.  In 
agriculture  nine-tenths  of  the  product  goes  to  the  share  of  the 
capitalist,  but  in  mining  three-fourths  of  the  yield  is  in  the  reward 
of  labor — another  instance  of  the  adjustment  of  means  to  ends  in 
the  system  of  Providence,  and  a  sure  advancement  of  the  changes 
that  are  to  carry  the  world  from  the  savage  to  the  millennial  state  of 
the  human  race — another  proof  that  all  the  movements  in  human 
history  are  tending  arid  tiding  to  better  things  and  better  still,  in 
infinite  progression. 

In  the  order  of  human  advancement  to  complete  dominion  in  the 
earth,  we  thus  find  the  race  going  from  the  animal  to  the  vegetable, 
and  finally  to  the  mineral  world,  for  their  subjects  and  their  best 
services — from  the  narrowly-limited  and  the  precarious  animal  sup 
plies,  to  the  more  abundant  and  more  secure  vegetable,  though  sub 
ject  to  the  caprices  of  the  seasons;  and  thence,  at  the  last  stage,  to 
the  body  of  the  solid  earth,  whose  stores  depend  upon  neither  time 
nor  climate  nor  season,  nor  any  of  their  changes.  In  the  suc 
cessive  kinds  of  mineral  contributions,  it  is  curious  to  observe  that 
gold  and  silver  are  found  by  savages  in  the  sands  of  the  water 
courses,  while  they  are  yet  using  implements  of  stone  and  wood  in 
handicraft;  that  along  with  these,  barbarous  nations  employ  copper 
and  iron,  which  they  contrive  to  smelt  and  mould  for  use  with  fuel 
of  wood,  and  in  architecture  they  utilize  stone  and  clay  made  into 
bricks;  while  civilization  not  only  avails  itself  of  the  all-compelling 
power  of  heat  prospectively  provided  for  this  use  in  the  fossil  coal 
that  at  present  is  the  greatest  agent  in  the  world's  work ;  yet 
further:  just  as  modern  geography  has  added  a  fifth-quarter  to  the 


WEALTH — SOURCES    OF    GROWTH.  G7 

old  world,  so  modern  science  has  begun  to  annex  another  kingdom 
to  the  three  that  compassed  the  realm  of  man's  subjects  before  the 
birth  of  chemistry.  We  are  already  familiar  with  the  use  of  the 
imponderables,  which  have  their  pavilion  in  the  clouds  and  their 
amphitheatre  of  exposition  in  the  recesses  of  the  globe. 

These  successive  stages  of  substitution  stand  in  the  following 
order,  and  the  instances  uiven  will  serve  to  illustrate  it. 

First.  From  the  animal  to  the  vegetable  kingdom  : 

Vegetable  food        substituted  for          Animal  food. 

Cotton  "  Skins  and  wool. 

Flax  and  cotton  "  Silk. 

Jlemp  Skins  in  sails  and  cordage. 

Gutta  perch  a,  caoutchouc  "  Leather. 

Wooden  canoe  "  The  wild  horse. 

Paper  of  rags  Parchment. 

Alcohol  and  vegetable  oils  "  Animal  oil. 

Second.  From  the  vegetable  to  the  mineral  kingdom  : 

Steel  and  gold  pen  and  metallic  types  substituted  for  The  goose  quill. 
Iron,  stone,  brick,  slate,  in  ships  and  architecture,     "        Timber. 
Coal,  gas,  mineral  oil  "        Wood  as  fuel. 

Third.  From  animals  and  vegetables  to  minerals : 

Iron  Engines  substituted  for  The  horse,  ox,  and  camel. 

Steel  springs  "  Feathers  and  hair. 

Glass  "  Skins. 

Mineral  gas  "  Animal  oil  and  wnx,  as  light. 

Mineral  manures  "  Animal  and  vegetable  manures. 

Metal  gun  Wooden  bow  and  animal  string. 

Wood  and  iron  carriages         (t  Animal  transportation. 

Wooden  and  metallic  machin-  f  Human  bone  and  muscle  in  man- 

ery  ((  (      ufacturing. 

Steam  machinery  "  Animal  power. 

Fourth.  From  animal,  vegetable,  and  mineral  to  the  imponder 
ables  : — 

Electricity  substituted  for  living  messengers  and  vegetable  sails. 
Galvanic  heat  "       vegetable  and  mineral  heat. 

Beside  these  transitions  from  kingdom  to  kingdom  of  the  material 
world,  there  is  a  constant  substitution  proceeding  from  the  scarcer 
and  costlier  and  poorer  in  each  division  to  something  better  and 


68  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

easier  of  attainment  within  its  own  class,  which  we  need  not  stop 
to  specify ;  but  there  is  one  instance  which,  being  less  familiar,  or 
generally  unknown,  though  already  proved,  deserves  to  be  noticed 
here  for  its  surpassing  importance  in  the  world's  business  affairs. 

This  is  gas  for  fuel  made  from  water,  and  with  the  addition  of 
carbon  to  answer  the  purpose  of  giving  artificial  light  as  we  have  it 
now  from  coal.  Water  largely  supplies  the  combustible  substance, 
and  the  required  gas  can  be  produced  from  it  at  about  the  tenth  of 
the  cost  of  the  manufacture  from  coal.  It  is  to  her  coal  more  than 
to  all  the  other  agents  of  industrial  production,  that  England  owes  her 
supremacy  in  manufactures,  and  in  their  transportation  to  the  world's 
markets.  The  promise  of  a  substitute  that  will  replace  her  coal 
when  it  shall  be  either  exhausted  or  become  over  expensive  in  the 
mining,  saves  her  from  an  utter  failure  of  her  industries;  but,  as  the 
supply  of  material  for  this  service  is  common  and  exhaustless  in  all 
climates  all  over  the  earth,  there  can  be  no  monopoly  by  any  nation, 
and  the  industrial  despotism  of  England  will  come  to  an  end. 
Germany,  France.  Russia,  and  the  United  States  are  even  now  fast 
approaching  independence  of  the  "  Workshop  of  the  World." 
Some  of  these  have  coal  fields  that  will  furnish  them  for  a  few 
thousand  years  to  come.  These  coal  beds  will  be  for  generations 
easily  worked,  and  the  labor  cost  of  their  product  will  be  light,  while 
that  of  England  will  be  continually  increasing  with  the  depth  and 
distance  to  which  the  long-worked  veins  must  be  pursued.  The 
natural  growth  of  capital  and'-labor  in  these  favored  regions  will,  at 
an  early  day,  make  their  rivalry  successful ;  and  if  our  expectations 
from  water  gas  shall  be  realized,  the  end  of  British  domination  in 
the  world's  market  will  be  the  sooner  and  the  more  surely  reached. 

This  "Old  Man  of  the  Sea"  has  rendered  good  service  in  guiding 
the  nations  in  their  forward  pathway,  but  it  has  been  at  the  expense 
of  carrying  his  weight  till  it  has  grown  over-burthensome.  The 
younger  nations  are  coming  of  age,  and  the  mother  country  must  let 
go  the  leading  strings.  When  pupilage  becomes  vassalage,  resist 
ance  is  compelled.  Children  that  do  not  in  due  time  reach  maturity 
are  unworthy  of  their  parents.  Australia,  Canada,  and  the  West 
Indies  are  already  near  the  end  of  their  political  dependence,  and 
they  will  soon  strike  effectively  for  economic  freedom  after  the 
example  of  the  United  States.  "The  better  day  coming"  cannot 
come  till  all  this  is  done  and  well  done.  Mere  political  sovereignty 


WEALTH — SOURCES    OF    GROWTH. 


GO 


over  her  colonies  never  was  her  aim.  It  was  achieved,  and  has 
been  held  in  all  her  provinces  for  the  one  purpose  of  securing  their 
markets.  In  the  course  of  events  the  little  islands  of  Great  Britain 
which  can  be  covered  with  a  thimble  on  any  middling  sized  map  of 
the  habitable  globe,  have  lost  the  military  preeminence  among  the 
nations  that  once  could  hold  them  in  check,  and  her  own  territories  in 
subjection.  And  they  are  fast  losing  that  mastery  in  production,  for 
which  all  England's  wars  were  made,  and  which  all  her  invasions 
were  designed  to  secure.  England  must  ere  long  descend  from  her 
pre-eminence,  and  take  her  befitting  position  among  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  nations.  The  world  owes  her  much — a  balance  still 
after  all  the  heavy  payments  made  in  return.  But  the  patent  right 
in  discoveries  must  run. out  some  time;  and  in  the  things  for  which 
the  rest  of  mankind  are  in  her  debt,  that  time  arrives  when  the 
principal  of  the  obligation  is  lost  in  the  enormous  interest  which  it 
has  returned. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

POPULATION — LAW  OF  INCREASE. 

Population  :  Rate  of  increase  in  United  States,  England  and  Wales,  Prussia  and 
France. — Great  difference  between  peoples  nearly  alike  in  origin. — Malthusians 
hold  a  constant  quantity  in  the  reproductive  function. — Variant  death  rate  of 
earlier  and  later  dates ;  Greatest  in  the  sparsest  populations. — Death  rate  nearly 
the  same  in  communities  which  greatly  differ  in  rate  of  total  increase. — A  con 
stant  quantity  in  the  reproductive  function,  with  relatively  constant  diminution 
of  sustenance,  held  by  the  British  authorities. — The  protest  of  Philosophy  and 
Philanthropy ;  submission  of  Theologians,  the  reason  why. — The  primal  curse 
contains  a  promise  of  sufficiency. — The  facts  of  history. — The  sources  of  the 
dismal  philosophy. — Contradictions  of  these  theorists. — Analogies  forced  upon 
differences. — Different  data  and  method  of  the  inquiry. — Arithmetical  measure 
ment  of  possible  quantity  of  life  and  of  food,  indifferent.  —Sufficiency,  the 
issue. — Possible  productiveness  of  man  and  earth  unknown. — The  question,  one 
of  principles  and  not  of  estimated  numerals. — The  strictly  inductive  sciences 
assume  adjustment  of  means  to  ends. — The  a  posteriori  method. — Limits  of 
its  province. — Does  not  apply  to  life  united  to  liberfy  and  responsibility. — All 
the  facts  not  within  the  range  of  observation  and  experiment. — Their  focal 
point  and  interpretation,  in  the  design  of  the  Creator. — The  a  priori  or  deduct 
ive  method  alone  capable  of  the  problem  of  man's  relations  to  his  material 
conditions. — A  posteriori  method,  the  vice  of  metaphysics  and  political 
economy. — The  past  and  future  in  the  physical  sciences  rest  upon  the  a 
priori  system  of  reasoning. — A  sound  faith  must  be  corroborated  by  facts  as 
far  as  they  go. — The  power  of  vital  reproduction  in  an  inverse  ratio  to  the 
power  of  maintaining  life — an  universal  law. — No  corrective  checks  in  the 
inferior  animals — Viability  and  fecundity  proportioned  to  each  other,  and 
adjusted  to  the  intention  of  the  life. — The  intention  is  to  provide  for  the 
continuance  of  kinds,  and  to  meet  the  casualties  to  which  they  are  sub 
ject. — Transfer  of  this  law  from  different  species,  to  equally  varied  conditions 
of  the  human  species. — Justified  by  the  historic  changes  in  the  human  death 
rate,  and  the  explanation  it  affords  of  the  almost  fabulous  populations  of 
ancient  times. — The  supply  answers  the  demand,  and  the  demand  rules  the 
supply. — The  results  afforded  by  the  argument  of  analogy. — The  law  tried  by 
the  inductive  method. — Its  physiological  basis  contained  in  three  proposi 
tions  or  general  laws  of  the  human  organism. — Disease  a  broken  balance  of 
functional  activities. — Unequal  distribution  of  action  among  the  several  organs 
in  health. — Effect  of  habitual  concentration. — Actual  action  of  organs  not 
measured  by  their  possibilities. — Nervous  functions  antagonize  the  reproduc 
tive. — Remedy  for  excess  in  balanced  activity. — The  excess  meets  the  losses  of 
70 


POPULATION.  71 

disordered  life. — Improvements  in  the  forms  of  labor,  the  self-acting  correct 
ive. — The  remedy  most  active  just  where  it  is  most  needed. — The  promise  in 
intellectual  improvement. — Advancement  in  agriculture  will  diminish  demand 
and  increase  supply. — Moral  improvement  will  bring  with  it  greater  pro 
duction  of  sustenance  and  greater  economy  in  consumption. — Tendency  of 
progress  to  restore  equilibrium  of  functions  and  harmony  of  relations  between 
earth  and  man. — Apparent  exception. — Indian  chivalry. — Activity  of  the 
nervous  functions  in  the  Hunter  tribes ;  their  infertility  falls  within  the  rule  of 
our  law. — Physiological  ignorance  checks  criticism  in  special  cases. — Consider'a- 
tion  due  to  exceptions. — The  present  emigration  from  Western  Europe. — Sum 
mary  of  conclusions. — Great  mortality  results  from  abuses. — Waste  of  life  not  a 
blunder  of  the  Creator. — Excessive  fertility  designed  to  repair  abnormal  loss. — 
The  remedy  in  the  evil. — The  law  works  to  good. — Happy  results,  the  marks 
and  tests  of  Nature's  laws. 

THE  distribution  of  wealth  would  fitly  follow  the  examination 
we  have  given  to  the  laws  governing  its  accumulation;  but  our 
inquiries  have  a  drift  that  requires  the  preliminary  investigation  of 
a  subject  intimately  involved  in  the  question  of  sustenance  adjusted 
to  numbers — the  law  of  the  relation  of  Population  to  supply.  We 
begin  with  the  facts  that  we  may  have  the  field  fairly  before  us. 
In  the  sixty  years  preceding  1860,  the  population  of  the  United 
States  increased  very  nearly  three  per  cent  per  annum  (com 
pounded),  or,  at  the  rate  of  doubling  every  twenty-three  and  a  half 
years.  The  native  white  people,  after  deduction  of  the  immigrants, 
may  be  put  at  two  and  seven-sixteenths  per  cent  per  annum,  at  which 
rate  they  duplicated  once  in  twenty-seven  years.  Great  Britain  (Ire 
land  excluded)  doubled  its  numbers  in  the  last  fifty  years,  but 
allowance  for  emigration  would  reduce  the  period  to  forty-six 
years,  or  one  and  one-half  per  cent  per  annum.  Prussia  increased 
very  nearly  at  the  same  rate,  while  Prance,  almost  stationary,  has 
been  increasing  no  more  than  one-fourth  of  one  per  cent  per 
annum,  requiring  two  hundred  and  seventy-seven  years  to  double 
her  population. 

These  are  enough  to  exhibit  the  varied  rates  of  actual  increase 
occurring  among  nations  nearly  enough  alike  to  be  classed  together 
for  comparison.  Men  differing  from  each  other  constitutionally  no 
more  than  the  German  and  Celtic  stocks  in  Europe,  and  their  mixed 
descendants  in  America,  are  thus  found  to  vary  in  rate  of  natural 
increase  as  the  numbers  twenty-seven,  forty-six,  and  two  hundred 
and  seventy-seven  do  from  each  other.  It  must  be  understood  of 
these  figures  that  they  express  the  present  current  movement  of 


72  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

population  in  the  countries  named;  and,  throwing  out  of  considera 
tion,  for  the  present,  the  difference  of  conditions  that  may  be  sup 
posed  to  affect  the  results,  we  note  the  fact  that,  so  far,  we  have 
found  nothing  to  support  the  doctrine  that  the  reproductive  func 
tion  in  the  human  race  is  a  constant  quantity,  as  the  school  of 
Malthus  assumes  and  asserts  it  to  be. 

•Neither  has  the  law  of  mortality  any  greater  constancy  or  uni 
versality.  The  death  rate  varied  in  London  in  one  hundred  and 
sixty  years  (from  1685  to  1845)  from  one  in  twenty-three  of  its 
inhabitants  at  the  former  date,  to  one  in  forty  at  the  latter.  The 
ordinary  mortality  of  London,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  says 
Macaulay,  was  as  great  as  a  visitation  of  the  cholera  would  make  it 
in  the  nineteenth.  Thus  a  main  element  in  the  population  theory, 
imposed  upon  us  by  the  authorities,  is  affected  by  difference  of  time 
and  attendant  circumstances.  One  of  these  circumstances,  what 
ever  may  be  said  of  the  others,  is  particularly  unfortunate  for  the 
over-population  theory.  The  inhabitants  of  London,  when  its 
death  rate  was  at  the  highest,  were  not  more  than  one-twelfth  of 
the  number  that  the  city  contained  when  their  mortality  was  re 
duced  to  one-half  the  proportion  of  the  earlier  date. 

But  in  contemporary  history  we  have  a  record  that  is  every  way 
irreconcilable  with  the  theory  of  a  constant  quantity  in  the  func 
tion  of  procreation.  In  the  year  1860,  England,  whose  popula 
tion  grows  at  the  rate  of  doubling  once  in  forty-six  years,  shows 
one  death  to  every  forty-four  living  persons.  The  United  States, 
which  double  their  numbers  by  natural  increase  once  in  twenty- 
seven  years,  had  one  death  to  every  forty-five  inhabitants ;  France, 
which  scarcely  grows  in  numbers  at  all,  had  one  death  in  forty- 
four.  Here  the  proportion  of  deaths  to  the  living  people  is  almost 
the  same,  notwithstanding  the  immense  disparity  in  the  movement 
of  population  in  these  three  countries;  and  Prussia,  which  increases 
its  people  not  a  whit  faster  than  England  and  Wales,  had  one  death, 
to  thirty-two  of  its  people  in  that  year.  The  inference,  not  to  be 
escaped  is,  that  a  difference  in  the  proportion  of  births  to  popula 
tion,  in  nations  so  nearly  alike  as  these  are,  must  be  the  cause  of 
the  vastly  variant  increase  of  the  people. 

But  this  "constant  quantity"  of  the  pretended  law  encounters 
still  more  embarrassment,  and  more  emphatic  contradiction,  when  its 
application  is  tried  upon  very  widely  different  races,  or  families  of 


POPULATION.  73 

mankind,  which  we  will  notice  when  we  come  to  explain  it  in  the 
light  of  what  we  take  to  be  a  true  theory  of  the  subject. 

Only  the  Malthusiau  economists  and  the  utterly  unschooled  pub 
lic  hold  a  fixed  rate,  and  natural  predetermined  proportion  of  births 
to  adults,  without  respect  to  conditions,  or,  if  the  school  prefers  it, 
a  determined  possibility  of  procreative  power  inherent  in  the  human 
constitution.  These  theorists  are  also  distinguished  from  all  other 
thinkers  by  holding  the  inference  from  their  premises,  that  there 
is  in  the  constitution  of  earthly  things  a  positive,  natural  and  ever- 
increasing  disparity  between  the  production  of  human  life  and  the 
capability  of  the  earth  to  support  it. 

The  best  known  British  authorities  are  of  this  party.  Their 
systems  of  political  economy  are  built  upon  it,  and  can  stand  on  no 
other  ground. 

The  over-population  theory,  presented  at  the  beginning  of  the 
present  century  in  the  imposing  form  of  a  scientific  demonstration, 
did  not  pass  without  protest.  It  is  impossible  in  this  age  to  allow 
philosophy  to  justify  war,  pestilence,  and  famine,  as  the  necessary 
correctives  of  mischiefs  resulting  from  the  laws  of  nature.  The 
support  and  apology  for  despotism,  which  the  doctrine  affords,  is 
just  as  abhorrent  to  the  sentiments  of  charity  and  philanthropy. 
Theologians,  it  would  seem,  strangely  enough,  were  less  offended. 
The  doctrine  in  its  scientific  array  sprang  from  a  clergyman  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  was  early  and  eagerly  indorsed  by  Dr. 
Chalmers,  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland.  The  strong  tendency 
of  the  religious  sentiment  to  regard  the  present  life  as  under  a 
curse,  and  the  disorders  of  the  terrestrial  system,  as  the  reign  of 
punitive  justice,  with  a  necessary  suspension  of  providential  benefi 
cence,  perhaps,  accounts  for  the  submission  of  the  pulpit  to  this 
revolting  philosophical  heresy.  The  "thorns  and  thistles"  of  the 
primal  curse,  and  all  the  resistance  of  nature  to  the  dominion  of 
man,  which  it  signifies,  is,  indeed,  abundantly  fulfilled,  yet  there  is 
a  reassuring  clause  in  the  doom  pronounced :  "  In  the  sweat  of  thy 
face  shalt  thoit  eat  bread,  until  thou  return  unto  the  ground." 
The  condition  being  performed,  there  is  here  not  only  no  threat  of 
famine,  but  a  promise  of  supply.  Laymen,  while  they  admit  that 
the  earth  is  "a  vale  of  tears,"  may  be  allowed  to  press  the  miti 
gating  promise,  and  urge  the  proper  measures  of  relief  upon  the 
faith  and  hope  of  the  world.  In  the  more  cheerful  understand- 
6 


74  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

ing  of  the  earth's  economy,  there  is  no  need  of  "justifying  the 
ways  of  Grod  to  man,"  and,  what  is  still  more  to  the  purpose,  there 
is  no  necessity  for  justifying  the  ways  of  man  to  man.  It  insists 
that  better  ways  of  administering  the  affairs  of  earth  would  im 
prove  the  terrestrial  condition  of  her  children.  But  where  is  the 
\ise  of  beneficent  endeavor  if  it  must  necessarily  fail — if  in  the 
settled  order  of  sublunary  things  population  increases  faster  than 
the  supply  of  sustenance  can  any  way  be  made  to  meet? 

But  the  facts  of  human  history  in  all  places  and  times  down  to 
the  present :  Do  they  not  support  the  doctrines  of  the  dismal 
school  ?  We  answer  that  so  far  as  they  can  support  anything, 
they  do;  and  we  take  leave  to  add,  that  the  disorders  of  uiisgov- 
ernment  and  the  ill-distribution  of  the  products  of  industry,  the 
pauperism,  the  potato  rot,  and  the  enforced  emigration  of  Europe, 
are  the  puddles  from  which  her  philosophers  draw  all  their  data, 
and  fabricate  their  principles ;  grounds  about  as  good  for  a  system 
of  providential  laws  as  a  street  riot  affords  for  constructing  a  phi 
losophy  of  societary  organization.  How  these  people  philosophize 
upon  the  facts  which  disorder  supplies ! 

Of  the  host  of-  writers  upon  this  subject,  some  hold  that 
abundance  of  food  increases  human  fertility  in  a  direct  ratio;  as 
if,  because  deficiency  of  sustenance  induces  disease  and  death, 
sufficiency  must  run  to  excess  of  life  !  Others  are  of  a  directly 
opposite  opinion.  According  to  them,  fecundity  is  in  the  inverse 
ratio  of  sustenance.  This  direct  antagonism  is  about  equally  well 
supported  by  such  facts  as  the  respective  parties  select  and  use  in 
their  demonstrations.  Some  think  that  vegetable  is  a  stronger 
stimulant  than  animal  food ;  for  which  they  cite  the  greater  pro 
ductiveness  of  herbivorous  than  of  carnivorous  animals:  forget 
ting  that  the  fishes  literally  fill  the  seas,  yet  live  for  the  most  part 
upon  other  fishes  and  insects ;  and,  above  all,  forgetting  that  they 
are  carrying  over  such  facts  from  that  world  of  animal  life,  whose 
destiny  is  limited,  and  whose  creatures  are  incapable  of  the  liberties 
of  progressiveness,  which  is  the  distinguishing  ingredient  of  re 
sponsibility,  to  the  world  of  man,  whose  fortunes  and  fate  are  not 
bounded  by  his  instincts,  but  who  is  made  master  of  the  conditions 
on  which  his  well-being  depends,  and  must,  therefore,  in  his  constitu 
tion  and  capabilities,  be  adjusted  to  his  destiny. 

The  assumption   that  man  ia  only  a  beast,  as  to  the  laws  of  his 


POPULATION.  75 

life  and  his  relations  to  surrounding  things,  is  not  a  safe  starting- 
point  for  a  philosophy  of  his  nature  and  fortunes.  So  far  as  his 
constitution  exactly  corresponds  to  that  of  inferior  creatures,  and, 
so  far  as  his  functions  are  bounded  by  the  like  limits  and  uses,  the 
argument  from  analogy  is  legitimate ;  but  from  the  point  of  depar 
ture  where  his  endowments  begin  to  look  to  a  totally  different  use 
and  end,  all  analogous  reasoning  must  stop,  because  it  no  longer 
serves  for  interpretation. 

The  method  here  to  be  adopted  in  discussing  the  law  of  the  re 
lation  of  population  to  the  means  of  subsistence  will  greatly  abridge, 
as  well  as  greatly  change,  the  process  of  inquiry.  For  reasons 
that  a  little  further  on  will  be  seen,  we  abstain  now  from  consider 
ing  either  the  historic  or  the  possible  fertility  of  the  race,  or  of  the 
capabilities  of  the  earth  as  a  means  of  measuring  their  adjustment 
to  each  other.  The  quantity  of  effect  in  either  is  obviously  indif 
ferent,  provided  they  are,  under  an  overruling  law,  adapted  to  each 
other.  Not  the  actual  numbers  of  the  one,  but  the  sufficiency  of 
the  one  to  the  other,  is  the  point  at  issue.  In  fact,  the  quantity  of 
the  possible  products  of  neither  is  known.  Neither  the  possible 
productiveness  of  the  earth,  of  the  soil,  the  waters,  and  the  air,  nor 
the  future  or  ultimate  rate  of  increase  in  the  numbers  of  men, 
are,  or  can  be,  now  ascertained.  These  problems  cannot  be  brought 
within  the  range  of  arithmetical  estimate.  The  question  rests  not 
upon  numerals,  but  upon  principles. 

The  chief  of  these  principles  belongs  to  the  province  of  final 
causes — a  rule  of  reasoning  by  no  means  unknown  or  unused  in  the 
cultivation  of  the  strictly  physical  sciences.  The  Inductive  Sys 
tem,  itself,  is  compelled  to  assume  that  the  means  are  provided  in 
the  constitution  of  things  for  the  accomplishment  of  the  ends 
clearly  indicated.  It  cannot  advance  a  step  in  any  path  of  dis 
covery  without  postulating  the  principle  that  the  prophesy  of  the 
end,  in  all  the  realms  of  nature,  is  the  pledge  and  proof  of  provided 
means.  There  is  no  other  basis  for  any  science  of  created  things. 
An  orbit,  with  an  apparatus  of  vision,  found  in  a  fossil  skull,  means 
a  provision  of  light,  or  it  means  nothing.  A  skeleton  chest,  with 
a  slight  twist  in  the  ribs,  proves  conclusively  the  coexistence  of 
respirable  air — the  structure  of  a  tooth  implies  the  contemporaneous 
existence  of  a  particular  kind  of  food;  so,  natural  science  builds 
its  certainties  as  much  upon  the  harmonies  of  the  creation,  and  as 


76  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

confidently,  too,  as  upon  any  observations  of  events  or  any  results 
of  experiment.  Thus  far  the  matter-of-fact  philosophy  extends 
itself  into  the  domain  of  the  deductive  or  a  priori  system  of 
reasoning ;  unconsciously,  perhaps,  but  actually  and  effectively. 

The  rigid  a  posteriori  method  traces  the  facts  of  observation 
from  the  simplest,  up  through  successive  and  enlarging  generaliza 
tions,  till  the  most  general  fact  is  found,  which  is  taken  to  be  the 
law  of  the  whole  series.  This  is  the  rule  of  inquiry  into  the 
laws  of  unmixed  materialism,  and  it  is  legitimate  and  suc 
cessful  only  in  the  department  of  physics;  in  general  terms,  it  rules 
among  the  phenomena  of  celestial  and  terrestrial  mechanics. 

But  it  has  never  had  any  success  in  mental  philosophy,  ethics, 
civil  government,  or  social  science,  or  any  remedial  system  of  either 
animal  or  societary  life ;  that  is,  in  any  department  of  human 
knowledge  concerned  with  the  errors  and  abuses  of  liberty.  More 
over,  the  phenomena  of  life  united  with  liberty  or  will  acting  upon 
motives,  and  accompanied  by  responsibility,  are  not  complete 
enough  in  range,  nor  clear  enough  in  their  meaning,  within  the 
limits  of  experience,  to  indicate  their  central  or  supreme  truths; 
for  the  reason  that  the  ends  and  aims  lie  all  out  of  the  reach  of 
observation  and  experiment.  They  centre  not  in  the  midst  of  the 
known,  but  away  beyond  all  its  measurable  lines.  The  drift  and 
tendency  of  the  facts  may  be  seen,  indeed,  but  their  focal  point  is 
in  the  design  of  the  Creator. 

Water  may  be  resolved  into  its  constituent  gases,  and  may  again 
be  recomposed  of  them.  The  circuit  of  its  possibilities  is  thus 
known,  and  the  relations  of  its  elements  to  each  other  are  revealed 
in  kind  and  measure.  But  of  man  we  know  but  little,  either  of  his 
past  or  present,  that  can  serve  to  prophesy  his  future.  Our  know 
ledge  of  his  relations  to  the  things  around  him  is  so  incomplete, 
and,  withal,  so  uncertain,  that  the  inductive  philosophy  is  warned  by 
its  own  principles  not  to  reason  from  a  part,  as  if  it  were  the  whole, 
and  inquiry  is  of  necessity  remitted  to  the  method  which  assumes 
the  means  required  for  expectant  ends. 

The  misuse  of  the  a  posteriori,  or  inductive  method,  in  matters  to 
which  it  does  not  apply — of  which  it  is  wholly  incapable — is  the  vice 
of  our  metaphysics  and  of  our  political  economy;  and  it  is  owing  to 
this  that  neither  of  them  is  truly  a  science,  or  even  capable  of  ren 
dering  safe  service  throughout  their  respective  realms  of  study. 


POPULATION.  77 

The  most  rigid  of  the  Baconian  philosophers  who  thinks  it 
unsafe  to  venture  beyond  the  circuit  of  his  five  senses,  cannot 
object  to  our  assuming  just  what  he  must  assume,  before  he  can 
reason  at  all  on  anything  of  the  past  that  has  left  only  its  vestiges, 
or  anything  of  the  future  which  affords  only  its  hints  of  the  un- 
arrived.  He  believes,  and  he  assumes,  the  harmonies  and  adjust 
ments  of  means  and  processes  to  their  obvious  ends,  and  he  inter 
prets  those  processes  and  agencies  by  the  ends  in  which  they  centre 
and  ultimate  themselves.  We  only  use  his  license,  and  follow  his 
example  in  believing  that,  whether  the  earth  was  made  for  man,  or 
man  for  the  earth,  they  must  mutually  suit  and  serve  each  other, 
and  that  there  cannot  exist  a  war  of  design  in  the  relations  of 
either  to  the  other. 

I  would  not,  however,  intimate  that  our  theory  of  the  matter  in 
hand  rests  alone  upon  our  faith  in  providential  adjustment  of  the 
earth  to  human  needs;  for  a  sound  faith  must  be  corroborated  by 
facts  as  far  as  they  go.  Such  corroboration  is  plainly  found  in  the 
facts  of  observation,  and  in  analogies  which  partially  measure  and 
cover  the  ground  which  we  take. 

Among  the  various  species  of  animated  beings  we  find  one  in 
variable  and  universal  fact :  The  power  of  reproduction  of  life  is 
in  an  inverse  ratio  to  the  power  of  maintaining  it.  The  insects 
of  a  day  are  produced  in  myriads  ;  the  lower  animals,  whose  span 
is  limited  to  half  a  dozen  years,  are  reduced  and  limited  to  hun 
dreds  of  offspring  ;  while  the  higher  grades,  who  live  a  score  or  more 
years,  are  in  due  proportion  less  prolific.  This  is  the  law  as  it 
obtains  among  various  species  of  the  animated  creatures  inferior  to 
man,  and  it  has  this  analogous  bearing  upon  our  problem  :  It  pro 
vides  for  the  necessary  numbers  and  continuance  of  kinds,  and 
meets  the  casualties  to  which  they  are  respectively  subject. 

Did  any  one  ever  imagine  that  the  abridgment  of  the  term  of 
life  in  these  creatures  was  designed  to  correct  a  natural  fertility 
beyond  the  provision  for  their  subsistence  ? 

Now,  can  we  carry  over  this  law  and  its  plain  intention,  as  far 
as  correspondence  exists,  and  apply  it  to  the  varied  conditions  of 
the  human  race?  May  we  extend  a  principle  which  rules  among 
distinct  species  of  beings,  to  as  large  a  difference  of  conditions  oc 
curring  in  a  single  race  or  species,  having  seen,  as  we  believe,  the 
intention  of  the  principle,  and  found  in  the, various  conditions  of 


78  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

that  species  the  like  necessity  for  the  analogous  working  of  the 
principle  ?  Let  us  see  how  the  application  will  justify  itself: 

In  the  savage  and  barbarous  states,  and  in  the  earlier  stages  of 
civilization — in  all  the  periods  of  disorder,  past  and  present — the 
mortality  of  the  race  in  early  life  is  frightfully  large.  The  power 
to  maintain  life  is  low,  and  the  rate-of  reproduction  is,  as  the  principle 
we  are  borrowing  requires,  very  large.  This  is  seen  in  the  drudges 
of  civilization  everywhere  in  Europe.  The  proposition  is  accurately 
supported  by  the  whole  history  of  the  past  which  is  definitely 
known.  The  average  term  of  life  has  been  lengthening,  since  the 
earliest  authentic  records,  step  by  step  with  the  improvements, 
social,  sanitary,  and  economical,  that  have  been  progressively  min 
istering  to  its  preservation ;  and  it  is  just  as  true  that  to  the  extent 
to  which  famine  and  pestilence  have  been  abated  or  abolished, 
fecundity  has  been  proportionately  diminished.  The  almost  in 
credible  populations  given  in  ancient  history  are  explained  on  our 
theory  by  the  proportionately  briefer  term  of  average  life.  The  sup 
ply  answers  the  demand ;  and  our  inference  is,  that  the  supply  will, 
in  the  future,  be  limited  and  determined  by  the  demand.  We  have 
the  prospect  of  a  continual  improvement  in  the  conditions  of  men. 
We  expect  still  better  and  better  sanitary  regulation  of  societary 
life;  better  support  by  food,  clothing,  and  lodging;  better  morals, 
and  better  and  broader  conformity  to  the  laws  of  mental  and  bodily 
health — all  the  happy  influences  of  spiritual  and  material  progress; 
that  is,  in  the  terms  of  our  proposition,  a  greater  power  to  maintain 
individual  life,  and  with  it  a  proportionate  reduction  in  the  rate 
of  reproduction.  These  results  the  argument  from  analogy  affords  us. 
.  These  we  take  to  be  the  mutual  adjustments  which  the  providential 
law  secures. 

Giving  their  due  weight  to  the  arguments  offered,  and  asking  for 
them  no  more  than  they  may  logically  claim,  we  propose  now  to 
meet  the  question  directly  after  the  manner,  and  using  the  data,  of 
the  inductive  system  of  the  matter-of-fact  philosophy  which  must 
be  confronted  with  its  own  weapons,  and  on  its  own  ground  of  faith. 
We  turn  to  the  well-established  laws  of  the  organism  whose  func 
tions  and  force  of  action  are  the  conditions  of  the  problem.  In  the 
three  following  propositions  we  think  the  demonstration  of  our 
doctrine  will  be  found  : 

1st.  The  nervous  "system    in  the    different  species  of  creatures 


POPULATION.  79 

varies  with  their  respective  capability  of  maintaining  life — larger 
proportionately  as  they  are  longer-lived. 

2d.  The  degree  of  fertility  is  regularly  in  inverse  proportion  to 
the  development  and  activity  of  the  nervous  system ;  the  larger  and 
the  more  active  nervous  systems  being  always  the  least,  and  the 
smaller  and  less  active,  the  most  prolific. 

3d.  The  functions  of  the  various  organic  systems  in  the  indi 
vidual  divide  among  themselves  the  aggregate  of  his  vital  power, 
being  equally  active  in  a  state  of  equilibrium;  but  in  all  unequal 
distributions  of  activity  the  dominating  function  is  sustained  at  the 
expense  of  one  or  more  of  the  others. 

The  first  of  these  propositions  need  not  be  argued,  nor  does  it 
require  illustration  by  examples.  The  reader  is  only  fairly  assumed 
to  be  ready  to  accept,  and  from  familiar  instances  to  confirm  it,  or 
in  defect  of  the  necessary  information,  he  may  find  it  in  any  good 
work  upon  human  or  comparative  physiology. 

The  second  proposition  results  from  the  third,  but  is  entitled  to 
distinct  statement  because  of  its  eminent  force  among  the  instances 
of  the  third,  and  its  direct  relevancy  to  the  question  under  considera 
tion.  Such  demonstration  as  seems  to  be  demanded  by  the  last  two, 
considered  as  one,  is  here  submitted. 

Disease  manifests  this  diversion  of  energy  from  one  or  more  sets 
of  organs,  and  its  concentration  upon  others,  as  in  fever,  where  the 
excitement  of  the  nervous  and  circulating  systems  is  inordinately 
great  at  the  expense  of  the  muscular  and  digestive  systems ;  and  so 
in  every  morbid  state  involving  the  frame  more  or  less  generally. 
Disease  has  been  well  and  pertinently  defined,  a  broken  balance  of 
excitement.  A  similar  inequality  of  distribution  of  vital  power  is 
almost  constantly  exhibited  in  conditions  not  incompatible  with  the 
general  health;  and  its  necessity  is,  in  all  instances  of  intense  occu 
pation,  enforced  and  felt.  The  examples  are  familiar  in  every  one's 
experience  in  his  casual  application  of  one  function,  or  one  set  of 
associated  functions.  In  cases  of  permanent  concentration,  where 
the  fixity  amounts  to  a  habit,  excluded  offices  of  the  body  or  mind 
fall  into  the  incapacity  of  disuse;  the  predominant  offices  deteriora 
ting  or  disabling  those  which  must  be  robbed  to  enrich  them. 

The  first  deduction  to  be  drawn  for  present  use  from  facts  so 
obvious  as  these,  is,  that  no  fixed  and  invariable  quantity  of  action, 
or  of  results,  can  be  predicated  of  any  one  of  the  distinct  systems  of 


80  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

organs  in  the  human  body ;  mujch  less  can  the  highest  possibility  of 
any  one  be  taken  as  its  measure  of  activity  in  all  times,  places 
and  circumstances,  as  the  "  constant  quantity"  of  the  Malthusians 
affirms.  All  this  is  eminently  true  of  the  antagonism  of  the  nervous 
and  reproductive  powers,  as  appears  in  the  excessive  fecundity  of  the 
drudges  of  civilization — among  the  former  slaves  of  the  Southern 
States  and  the  correspondent  toilers  of  Europe.  There  does  not 
appear  to  be  such  incompatibility  in  muscular  as  in  nervous  activity. 
The  intellectual  and  moral  faculties  of  themselves,  and  these  as  they 
are  acted  upon  by  the  external  senses,  seem  to  be  special  antagonists 
of  those  specially  concerned  in  the  propagation  of  the  race.  Just 
where  the  animal  prevails  over  the  mental  habits  of  life,  and  in  pro 
portionate  degree,  fecundity  is  seen  to  increase;  suggesting  plainly 
enough  that  the  remedy  for  excess  of  population  is  not  in  this  or 
that  kind  of  food,  nor  in  artificial  restraint,  but  in  the  duly- 
balanced  development  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  functions  of  the 
brain  and  nerves.  All  the  contrarieties  of  fact  which  every  other 
theory  encounters  are  found  perfectly  accordant  with  this  one,  as 
expressed  in  our  three  general  propositions.  The  conclusion  to  be 
drawn  from  them  is,  that  a  harmonious  culture  of  all  the  powers  of 
body  and  mind  will  insure  the  equilibrium  that  corrects  all  dispro 
portion,  either  of  excess  or  of  defect,  in  any  of  them.  In  accordance 
with  these  fundamental  principles,  the  facts  of  past  and  present  ob 
servation  which  seem  to  threaten  an  over  population  of  the  globe, 
are  met  and  disarmed  of  their  terrors  by  the  obvious  reflection  that 
disorder  in  the  vital  offices,  giving  preponderance  to  the  procreative 
powers  and  enfeebling  the  constitutional  corrective  of  the  mental 
and  moral  faculties,  explains  the  evil  and  discovers  the  remedy. 
The  surplus,  however,  is  to  be  understood  not  only  nor  wholly  mis 
chievous,  but  as  serving  to  replace  the  waste  of  life  occurring  in 
conditions  that  rather  tend  to  extinction  than  to  excessive  numbers 
of  the  race. 

The  prospective  operation  of  these  laws — their  more  and  more 
happy  vindication  in  the  future,  is  their  most  attractive  claim  upon 
our  attention.  They  are  not  only  explanatory  of  an  existing  dis 
order,  but  they  are  remedial  in  their  operation.  Through  what 
agencies  and  in  what  conditions  are  they  to  exhibit  their  best  efforts  ? 
How  is  the  disturbed  balance  to  be  restored,  and  how  are  the  har 
monic  results  to  be  realized  ? 


POPULATION.  81 

The  change  in  the  forms  and  kinds  of  human  labor  that  are  so 
well  begun  and  advancing  so  rapidly,  promise  a  more  and  more  com 
plete  substitution  of  artificial  for  natural  labor.  This  modification 
of  agency  in  industrial  production  is  characterized  by  an  ever-in 
creasing  release  from  muscular  toil,  and  a  proportioned  substitution 
of  art  and  skill,  and  thought,  arid  their  associate  elevations  of  feeling, 
which  must,  while  they  educate  the  proper  human  nature  in  its 
superior  powers,  equally  develop  and  occupy  the  brain  and  nervous 
system;  thus  ever  more  and  more  strengthening  their  counter 
balance  of  the  animal  functions.  It  is  among  the  classes  of  men 
that  are  usually  called  the  masses  that  the  remedy  is  specially 
demanded,  and  here  we  have,  in  the  very  labor  which  they  must 
pursue,  the  opportunity  for  the  action  of  the  remedial  principle  pro 
vided.  The  moral  regimen  prescribed  is,  mind  mixed  more  and 
more  largely  with  muscle  in  producing  the  commodities  required 
for  human  support.  Reformed  labor,  working  toward  the  harmony 
of  functional  activity  in  the  individual  labors. 

Men  look  now  for  a  better,  broader,  more  diffusive  and  effective 
mental  education  in  the  future,  growing  upon  a  grand  advancement 
already  secured — another  source  of  brain  development,  and  an 
effective  aid  to  its  counter-balancing  power. 

Shall  we  have,  resultiugly,  an  improved  agriculture  ;  helping,  on 
the  one  side  to  replenish  the  store  of  sustenance,  while  the  direct 
operation  of  mental  education  serves  to  restrain  the  present  excess 
of  requirement  ? 

Again  :  do  we  look  for  a  progressive  improvement  in  the  morals 
of  the  masses,  and  an  equally  improved  administration  of  social, 
civil,  and  international  justice  ?  This  promise,  also,  carries  the 
double  aspect  of  correction  at  once  in  the  relative  demand  of  the 
mass  of  consumers,  and  in  the  economies  of  consumption.  Moral 
refinement  will  give  the  required  supremacy  of  man  proper  over 
his  insurgent  animalism,  and  it  will  at  the  same  time  check  the 
waste  of  war,  the  defects  and  misdirection  of  industry,  and  the 
misuse  of  the  means  of  life.  In  a  thousand  ways  the  future  presents 
itself  in  expectation,  as  a  restorer  of  that  equilibrium  among  the 
various  activities  of  the  human  organism  on  which  depends  a 
growing  adjustment  of  the  living  man  to  the  material  elements 
appointed  to  sustain  him,  and  to  promote  his  welfare  in  the  exact 
proportion  that  he  conforms  to  the  laws  of  the  things  created 


82  QUESTIONS    OF    THE   DAY. 

for  his  use,  and  which   cannot   fail  in  the   service  but  by  their 
abuse. 

The  principle  here  asserted  must  be  familiarized  before  criticism 
is  safe.  Some  one,  for  instance,  may  answer,  "  but  the  North 
American  Indians  have  been  remarkable  for  infertility ;  they  are, 
as  a  race,  bat  slightly  endowed  with  the  intersexual  affections, 
and  they  are  savage  in  ignorance  and  in  pursuits."  We  answer: 
they  are  hunters,  followers  of  Diana,  the  goddess  of  the  chase  and 
of  chastity,  by  which  the  Greeks  must  have  meant  something  that 
found  its  correspondence  in  things  well  known.  These  savages  are 
as  much  distinguished  from  the  lowest  class  of  civilizees  in  their 
occupations  as  in  fecundity.  They  have  a  fiery,  nervous  tempera 
ment,  great  acuteness  of  the  perceptive  faculties,  willfulness,  arro 
gance — sentiments  that  are  the  rougher  half  of  those  that  consti 
tute  the  chivalric  among  us;  they  are  proud,  desperately  selfish, 
brave,  revengeful,  absolutely  ungovernable,  and  incapable  of  en 
slavement.  They  are  eminently  the  men  who  do  die  in  the  last 
ditch,  and  they  are  as  eloquent  as  unlettered  men  can  be.  All 
this  indicates  very  considerable  activity  of  brain,  and  in  the  very 
direction  that  specially  answers  to  the  principle  by  which  our  theory 
would  explain  them. 

The  hunter  life  demands  great  vigilance,  alertness,  and  sharpness 
of  observation  and  reflection,  which  draws  largely  upon  the  nerves 
of  sense  and  the  coordinating  power  of  the  brain.  Their  perpetual 
warfare  among  themselves  is  another  heavy  drain  upon  the  nervous 
system,  in  all  the  modes  of  action  that  danger,  ambition,  and  emu 
lation  so  powerfully  induce.  Their  whole  life  is  a  rapid  alternation 
of  toil  and  sloth,  surfeit  and  want,  and  their  social  intercourse,  or 
system  of  society,  rather  represses  than  favors  the  affections.  The 
tone  as  well  as  the  character  of  the  governing  impulses  is  un 
friendly  to  sexual  attachments,  and  thus  this  apparent  objection 
falls  very  fully  into  the  rank  of  an  example  under  the  rule. 

The  application  of  this  doctrine  to  cases  not  apparently  accordant, 
which  may  present  themselves  in  one  of  a  thousand  or  a  hundred 
instances,  need  not  be  considered  here.  Their  special  conditions 
are  seldom  known,  and  medical  science  is  yet  so  far  from  fathoming 
the  mysteries  of  the  reproductive  functions  that  nothing  of  force 
btilongs  to  it  in  the  investigation  of  the  question.  Besides,  a  pro 
digious  array  of  clear  examples  may  easily  be  adduced  wherein 


POPULATION.  83 

unquestionable  absorption  of  the  vital  forces,  by  the  mental  activi 
ties  of  the  life,  are  in  the  fullest  accord  with  the  tenor  of  the  law 
which  the  larger  and  more  completely  comprehensive  view  of  facts 
thoroughly  establishes.  Exceptions  are  not  to  be  ignored,  because 
rules  admit  of  them,  or  because  they  prove  the  rule,  as  the  proverb 
most  illogically  affirms,  for,  in  fact,  they  contradict  the  rules  which 
should  include  and  govern  them;  but  because,  in  the  inquiry  in 
hand,  they  are  not  proved  to  be  exceptions.  The  believers  in  a 
law  are  not  bound  to  explain  away,  or  to  surrender  to,  accidental 
instances,  which  neither  they  nor  anybody  else  understand. 

Emigration  as  we  see  it  and  as  it  has  been  in  past  times,  is  com 
pelled  by  the  failure  to  carry  forward  the  improvement  of  the  man 
in  conformity  with  the  law  that  adjusts  him  to  the  supply  of  sus 
tenance.  Labor  in  Western  Europe,  so  far  from  improving  him  and 
regulating  his  increase  of  numbers  in  harmonic  relations  to  the  in 
creased  productiveness  of  the  soil,  works  on  the  contrary  to  the 
constant  depression  of  the  lowest  class — these  are  the  emigrants  in 
the  much  largest  porportion.  The  more  advanced  classes  of  European 
society  do  not  migrate,  and  the  most  favored  and  best  developed 
portion  of  the  people  are  stationary  in  place,  for  the  reason  that 
they  do  not  multiply  in  offspring;  the  very  highest  scarcely  keeping 
up  their  numbers,  as  witness  the  great  number  of  instances  in  which 
titles  have  become  extinct  in  England  from  utter  failure  of  heirs  to 
inherit  them. 

The  emigration  from  France  is  almost  nothing,  because  there 
population  is  nearly  stationary. 

A  summary  of  the  conclusions  to  be  drawn  from  this  brief  dis 
cussion  of  the  laws  of  population  may  be  compactly  put  in  this 
form  : — 

The  waste  of  life  in  the  past  is  due  to  an  abnormal  preponderance 
of  the  animal,  over  the  intellectual  and  moral  faculties  of  the  race. 

That  waste  of  life  is  not  the  corrective  of  a  blunder  in  the  Crea 
tor's  system,  but  results  from  an  abuse  of  the  reproductive  function, 
and  its  excessive  activity  provides  for  the  waste  incident  to  the  dis 
orders  of  human  societies.  It  is  a  remedy  in  its  nature  and  inten 
tion,  and  not  a  mistake  or  maladjustment  of  natural  laws. 

Population  is  self-regulative.  In  the  organization  of  the  human 
frame  there  is  a  perpetual  endeavor  toward  the  establishment  of 
equilibrium  between  the  demand  for  sustenance  and  the  earth's 


84  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

supplies ;  so  that  ultimate  and  complete  harmony  awaits  the  con 
formity  of  man  to  the  laws  under  which  he  has  his  life ;  and  which 
in  the  mean  time  is  growing  in  exact  proportion  to  his  growing 
development.  This  is  obviously  the  meaning  of  the  divine  promise. 
"  Seek  first  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  his  righteousness  [conform 
your  life  to  the  Divine  Order],  and  all  these  things  shall  be  added 
unto  you/'  namely,  "  what  ye  shall  eat  or  what  ye  shall  drink,  or 
wherewithal  ye  shall  be  clothed." 

Despair  is  doctrinal  infidelity,  and  the  source  of  misdirection,  with 
all  the  ills  that  attend  ignorance  and  error  in  man's  mismanagement 
of  his  earthly  dominion. 

There  is  something  healthy,  holy,  happy  in  these  conclusions,  and 
they  are  for  these  sufficient  reasons  true. 

NOTE. — Limited  in  plan  and  space,  the  writer  cannot  task  himself  to  trace  the 
first  authorship  of  all  the  doctrines  he  adopts,  but  for  fuller  satisfaction  in  the 
matter  of  this  chapter,  he  refers  the  reader  to  an  article  in  the  Westminster  Review 
for  April,  1852,  since  ascribed  to  Herbert  Spencer,  and  to  Carey's  Social  Science, 
vol.  ii.3  pp.  265-306,  for  a  more  detailed  discussion  of  the  subject. 


-'•    •     -r"' 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

DISTRIBUTION    OF   WEALTH — WAGES. 

Distribution  of  Wealth — Wages:  In  the  savage  state;  in  barbarism  ;  in  civiliza 
tion  ;  Carey's  law  of  "Labor  Value." — Bastiat's  identical. — Quality  of  labor 
improves  in  the  ratio  of  quantity  of  cooperating  capital;  its  productiveness  in 
creased,  and  price  of  the  products  lessened  proportionately. — Tendency  of  the 
law  to  equality  of  benefits  demonstrated. — More  liberal  wages  secure  better 
\vork — the  capitalist's  interest  supplies  the  motive. — Wages  the  index  of  pro 
ductiveness. — In  progressive  communities  only  land  and  labor  increase  in  value 
— reasons. — Value,  the  cost  of  reproduction. — Rise  of  the  laborers  in  history. — 
Wages,  nominal  and  real;  value  of  money  must  be  resolved  into  its  purchasing 
power. — Agricultural  wages  in  England,  A.  D.  1660  to  1688. — Price  of  wheat  at 
the  time. — Wages  in  manufactures  in  1680,  a  shilling  a  day. — Doubled  in  one 
hundred  and  twelve  years. — Price  of  wheat  the  same  at  the  end  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years. — Food  of  the  people  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century. — 
Wages  have  risen  faster  than  the  price  of  food. — Tropical  productions  declined, 
and  manufactures  reduced  sixty  percent  in  thirty-five  years  (1817-1852). — Labor 
rises  in  value  in  the  ratio  that  productiveness  increases  ;  statistics  of  the  United 
States  in  proof. — Wages  of  skilled  industry  rise  fifteen  and  one-eighth  per  cent 
in  the  ten  years  1850-1860;  doubling  in  forty-seven  years. — Rise  in  the  United 
States,  in  the  same  ratio  to  growth  of  national  wealth  as  in  England,  showing  a 
law  of  equable  growth,  but,  the  law  of  the  growth  of  wages  relatively  to  that  of 
cooperating  capital  is  not  eqiwble. — Rate  of  increase  of  wages  much  more  rapid 
than  that  of  the  enhancement  of  profits  upon  the  capital  jointly  employed. — How 
advance  of  wages  is  provided  for  without  corresponding  loss  to  capital. — Sta 
tistical  demonstration. — The  provision  traced  to  its  source — the  substitution  of 
machinery  and  artificial  force  for  human  labor,  proof  by  the  figures  of  the 
census. — Artificial  labor  releases  men  from  low-priced  drudgery  and  remits  them 
to  the  higher  st3rles  of  work  with  their  higher  wages. — The  greater  effectiveness 
of  the  natural  agents  enhances  the  fund  upon  which  labor  draws  for  its  reward. — 
Wages  increase  and  employment  also  increases  with  all  improvement  in  the 
modern  modes  of  converting  industry. — Apparent  losses  of  capital  explained. — 
Both  labor  and  capital  increase  their  gains,  but  at  unequal  rates. — Labor  gains 
fifteen,  capital  five  per  cent. — The  laborer's  share  of  increased  productiveness 
increases  in  proportion;  that  of  capital  declines. — In  quantity  both  increase,  but 
the  laborer's  most  rapidly. — The  harmony  of  these  interests  working  through 
all  the  unhappy  conflicts  of  the  parties. — Wages  of  women  have  tripled  while 
those  of  men  have  been  doubling. — Reasons  of  this  different  rate  of  advance 
ment. — Why  the  year  1814  is  taken  as  the  date  of  the  new  era  of  wages. — The 

85 


86  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

liability  of  statistical  figures  to  abuse. — Figures  must  be  rectified  by  facts. — The 
capriciousness  of  prices. — Not  fluctuations,  but  changes  from  permanent  causes 
show  the  truth. — Price  of  iron  in  illustration. — Causes  of  unsteadiness  in  prices. — 
General  results,  a  better  guidance  than  figures  without  facts. — Women's  wages 
in  house  work  have  increased  in  real  value  about  six  times,  while  those  of  skilled 
laborers  have  been  doubling. — Men's  real  wages  advancing  five  fold  in  a  part 
of  their  consumption,  accompanied,  besides,  with  many  gratuitous  additions  and 
cheapened  uses,  availing  for  their  welfare. — Wages  and  food,  flesh  meats  only 
increased  in  price. — Aggregate  annual  wages  of  1814  and  1800  distributed  in 
subsistence,  showing  actual  increase. — Wages  effectively  doubled  in  the  United 
States  once  in  fifty-five  years. — Different  results  of  arithmetical  processes  from 
different  data  used  in  these  computations. — Epochal  dates  in  societary  and 
economic  movements  cannot  be  precise. — Error  in  amounts  do  not  affect  the 
percentage  of  increase  which  is  the  subject  of  inquiry. — Census  reports  of  values 
all  too  low. — Under  modifications,  according  to  the  greater  or  less  aid  of  capital, 
wages  are  the  index  of  productiveness. 

HAVING  shown  the  capability  of  the  earth  to  supply  subsistence, 
and  all  the  means  of  well-being  abundantly  adequate  to  the  re 
quirements  of  its  total  inhabitants,  we  are  next  concerned  to  see 
what  provision  is  made  in  the  constitution  and  order  of  things  for 
an  equitable  and  beneficent  distribution  of  its  products  among  the 
members  of  human  communities. 

In  the  savage  state  all  things  are  so  far  common  to  all,  that  the 
allotment  of  property  is  determined  by  individual  appropriation 
and  the  power  to  hold  possession.  Here  there  is  no  division  of 
capital  and  labor ;  no  system  of  progressive  accumulation ;  no  pro 
ductive  work,  in  its  proper  sense,  there  being  no  surplus  reserved 
for  further  production ;  no  capital  and,  therefore,  no  wages,  as  a 
share  of  joint  production.  And,  if  thA-e  are  none  of  the  special 
evils  of  inequality  in  wealth,  there  are,  also,  none  of  its  possibili 
ties  of  better  things  to  come. 

In  barbarism  there  is  accumulation  with  its  eminent  creative 
power,  and  to  the  freer  portion  of  the  people,  that  interest  in  pro 
duction  called  wages,  and  the  benefits  of  industrial  enterprise. 
The  many  may  be,  under  some  of  the  forms  of  slavery,  without 
capital  or  its  reflected  service,  and  may  have  no  recognized  property 
right,  even  in  the  means  of  subsistence.  But  the  laws  of  an  orderly 
distribution  of  wealth  are  beginning  to  work. 

Civilization  (distinguished  from  barbarism  by  its  necessary  ex 
clusion  of  personal  slavery)  distributes  the  joint  product  of  labor 
and  capital  in  the  several  kinds  of  profits,  under  the  names  of  rent, 


LAW    OF    WAGES.  87 

interest,  aiid  wages;  but  an  equitable  allotment  of  profits  is  not 
yet  secured.  Equity  encounters  hostile  interests,  and  unequal 
power  iu  the  parties  to  assert  its  claims;  and  wrongs,  with  their 
attendant  disorders  and  mischiefs,  disturb  and  derange  distribution 
in  freedom,  even  as  they  do  in  slavery,  though  less  in  degree  and 
less  hopelessly. 

Let  us  now  see  how,  in  these  circumstances,  the  laws  of  the  sub 
ject  work  toward  their  end,  which  we  assume  to  be  the  general  and 
individual  improvement  of  the  welfare  of  men  iu  progressive  com 
munities. 

In  the  year  1837  Mr.  Carey  first  announced  to  the  world  his 
doctrine  of  "  labor  value  "  with  such  resistless  demonstration  of  its 
truth,  that  even  the  highest  authority  of  the  rival  school  of  politi 
cal  economy,  Frederick  Bastiat,  adopted  it  in  1850,  under  the 
verbal  change  of  "  service  value/'  but  so  exactly  identical  in  sub 
stance  that  Professor  Ferrara,  of  the  University  of  Turin,  says : 
"The  theory,  the  ideas,  the  order,  the  reasoning,  and  even  the 
figures  of  the  '  Principles  '  of  Carey,  and  of  the  '  Harmonies '  of 
Bastiat,  coincide  perfectly." 

The  unskilled  may  derive  some  additional  assurance  from  such 
an  indorsement,  but  the  propositions  of  Mr.  Carey  are  quite  inde 
pendent  of  any  extrinsic  support.  His  most  general,  or  funda 
mental,  proposition  takes  this,  form  :  The  quantity  of  capital  and 
the  quality  of  the  labor  jointly  employed  in  production,  are 
in  direct  relation  to  each  other.  All  increase  and  decrease  of 
the  capital  connects  itself  with  corresponding  improvement  and 
deterioration  of  the  labor.  The  passive  and  active  agents  are  mar 
ried  "  for  better,  for  worse,"  which  may  be  resolved  into  the  fol 
lowing  dependent  propositions  : 

1st.  Labor  gains  increased  productiveness  in  the  proportion  that 
capital  contributes  to  its  efficiency. 

2d.  Every  improvement  iu  the  efficiency  of  labor,  so  gained  by 
the  aid  of  capital;  is  so  much  increased  facility  of  accumulation. 

3d.  Increased  power  of  production  and  accumulation  lessens  pro 
portionally  the  value  of  the  products  in  labor  cost,  and  of  simi 
lar  products  previously  existing;  thus  bringing  such  products 
more  easilv  within  the  purchasing  power  of  present  labor.  This 
last-mentioned  consequence  is  also  covered  by  the  same  author's 
definition  of  value,  which,  in  his  happy  rendering,  is  simply  the 


88  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

cost  of  re-production,  which  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that, 
nothing  can  command  a  higher  price  than  the  cost  of  producing  a 
similar  thing  at  the  time,  and  nothing  can  be  produced  at  less  than 
the  cost  of  producing  it.  (The  reader  will,  of  course,  take  care  to 
distinguish  value,  or  cost  of  production,  from  price  or  selling  price, 
which  is  casually  affected  by  sacrifice  and  speculation.) 

The  tendency  of  the  law,  as  stated  in  the  third  proposition,  to  in 
crease  the  relative  share  of  labor  up  to  its  equitable  proportion  in 
the  profits  of  industry  combined  with  capital,  is  too  obvious  to  need 
illustration,  provided  labor  wages  do  not  suffer  an  abatement  equiva 
lent  to,  or  greater  than  the  reduction  in  the  exchange  value  of  the 
commodities.  The  argument  of  this  point  may  be  put  thus  :  The 
laborer  must  receive  his  share,  or  wages,  out  of  the  product  to  which 
he  contributes.  That  share  depends  upon  the  quantity  of  such 
product.  The  larger  this  is,  the  greater  the  fund  on  which  he 
draws.  When  he  hires  the  capital,  his  share  is  the  residuum  after 
paying  the  capitalist  his  interest,  or  profit,  upon  the  investment. 
This  is  certain  when  the  laborer  is  his  own  employer;  and  his  profit 
is  found  in  the  enhanced  productiveness  of  his  labor  due  to  the  aid 
of  capital. 

When  the  capitalist  hires  the  labor,  which  is  the  more  general 
state  of  the  case,  a  like  equitable  division  of  profits  is  possible,  or  in 
other  words  the  fund  is  created  for  such  equitable  dividend,  and  it 
is  made  possible  for  him  to  receive  the  due  advantage  of  his  coopera 
tion  in  the  enlarged  yield  of  his  industry.  This  increased  produc 
tiveness  results  from  the  substitution  of  instruments,  machinery,  and 
artificial  motor  power,  which  is  capital's  share  of  the  agencies  em 
ployed;  and  the  laborer's  advantage  is  in  his  release  from  low-priced 
drudgery,  and  in  the  employment  of  his  higher  faculties — the  wages 
of  skilled  industry  being  always  proportioned  to  its  advancement 
above  mere  animal  power. 

The  ability  of  increased  productiveness  to  afford  increased  wages 
is  clear.  What  of  the  impelling  or  disposing  motive  in  the  em 
ployer  of  labor  ?  To  say  nothing  of  the  reserve  of  compelling 
power  that  there  is  in  the  laboring  class,  and  the  over-ruling  force 
of  the  sentiment  of  justice  embodied  in  public  opinion,  and  cor 
roborated  by  the  ever-active  working  of  providential  beneficence 
for  the  welfare  of  the  world ;  it  is  found  in  such  considerations  as 
these : — 


LAW    OF   WAGES.  89 

The  human  machine,  like  the  inanimate,  and  for  the  same  reasons, 
yields  results  to  the  employer  in  the  measure  of  its  capabilities  and 
conditions.  Its  highest  condition  is  necessary  to  its  highest  work 
ing  worth.  But  beside  the  food  and  clothing  of  the  one,  corre 
sponding  to  the  fuel,  or  other  motor  power,  and  the  structural 
materials  of  the  other,  the  human  producer  has  his  most  availing 
force  in  his  moral  and  rational  faculties.  The  cultivation  of  these, 
up  to  their  highest  serviceableness,  demands  the  opportunities  of 
some  leisure,  the  refinement  of  some  luxury,  the  cordial  stimulus  of 
current  comfort,  and  the  excitement  of  future  hope.  Such  develop 
ment  can  come  only  from  a  liberal  surplus  of  wages  after  provision 
is  made  for  the  common  necessities  of  the  mere  animal  life.  The 
policy  of  parsimony,  which  denies  these  conditions,  is  as  unwise  as 
the  saving  of  fuel  which  would  keep  a  steam  engine  restrained  to  half 
its  working  power.  The  work  of  a  man  who  is  aiming  at  a  seat  in 
the  American  Congress  is  worth  much  more  than  that  of  the  Euro 
pean  drudge  whose  prospect  is  the  poor-house.  The  ox  has  more 
brute  force,  the  engine  more  mechanical  power,  yet  these  are  always 
had  at  a  cheaper  rate  in  their  kinds  of  service  than  the  labor  market 
gives  for  the  use  of  those  high  human  qualities  on  which  capital 
depends  for  the  largest  enhancement  of  its  profits.  Hence  policy 
induces  equity,  and  the  effective  partnership  of  the  workman  secures 
him  a  growing  dividend  of  a  growing  productiveness.  From  the 
reason  of  the  thing,  therefore,  there  is  a  fair  inference  that  wages 
must  rise  with  productiveness  step  by  step,  and  keep  pace  in  im 
provement  with  the  yield  of  cooperating  capital.  The  percentage 
of  the  labor  share  in  the  yield  must  be  carried  up  with  the  growing 
value  to  which  it  is  an  indispensable  contributor. 

There  is,  moreover,  an  overruling  law  which  secures  this  result — 
a  law  established  by  all  the  facts  of  human  experience  :  in  ad 
vancing  communities  nothing  can  increase  in  value  except  land  and 
labor.  The  increasing  power  and  worth  of  these  reduce  the  labor 
cost  and  exchange  value  of  all  other  things.  The  one  being  the 
raw  material,  and  the  other  the  converting  agent,  in  the  production 
of  all  commodities,  their  worth  rises  just  in  the  ratio  that  the  value 
of  all  other  things  declines.  Value  is  simply  the  measure  of  the 
resistance  that  labor  and  skill  meet  in  subduing  natural  objects  to 
human  use.  The  converting  power  must  rise  in  utility  in  the  degree 
of  its  growth,  and  it  must  also  rise  in  exchange  value  in  proportion 
7 


90  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

to  the  cost  of  its  own  production,  which  iii  the  case  of  labor  is  the 
cost  of  its  education  and  training.  Land  necessarily  rises  as  its 
elements  are  advanced  from  uselessness,  or  resistance  to  use, 
toward  the  serviceable  states  and  forms  that  minister  to  man's 
requirements,  and  the  cost  of  its  improvement  measures  its 
value.  A  surface  acre  of  ore  unwrought,  has  no  other  than  a 
prospective  value;  converted  and  carried  up  to  its  best  forms,  it 
realizes  a  market  value  of  hundreds  or  thousands  of  dollars  in  the 
currency  that  commands  all  the  means  of  human  subsistence.  In 
like  manner,  and  for  the  like  reasons,  the  labor  of  bones  and 
muscles  may  be  had  at  the  price  that  barely  supports  life ;  that  of 
the  artisan  commands  the  means  of  advancement;  and,  the  highest 
skill,  united  to  taste,  talent,  and  science,  brings  the  rewards  of  the 
highest  rank  of  service  in  the  finer  manufactures,  in  the  fine  arts, 
and  in  the  learned  professions.  In  all  possible  applications  the 
definition  is  true — value  is  the  cost  of  production/ or  of  reproduc 
tion  at  the  time;  and  all  increase  of  skill  and  competency  must 
have  its  proportioned  price. 

The  facts  of  history  in  the  past,  and  all  observation  of  the 
present,  are  in  proof  of  these  propositions.  Ever  since  the  sys 
tem  of  villenage  was  abolished  in  England,  the  laboring  masses 
have  been  rising  into  better  conditions — very  slowly  in  the  days  of 
the  Stuarts;  something  faster  under  the  reigns  of  the  Georges;  and 
with  accelerated  rapidity  since  the  beginning  of  the  present  cen 
tury.  A  full  array  of  the  evidence  would  require  a  separate  trea 
tise,  but  the  pivot  points  of  this  history  are  entirely  sufficient. 

WAGES,  NOMINAL   AND   REAL. 

Wages,  in  report  from  such  records  as  exist,  are,  like  the  prices 
of  other  things,  expressed  in  the  money  of  the  time ;  but  money 
has  itself  a  very  variable  exchange  value  at  distant  periods ;  and, 
to  understand  its  worth,  we  must  know  its  purchasing  power,  or  its 
command  over  the  commodities  required  for  consumption.  Money 
is  no  more  a  standard  of  the  things  exchanged  in  the  market  than 
is  any  other  commodity.  It  is  the  common  medium  of  exchange, 
of  all  historic  times,  but  it  has  been  much  more  variable  than  any 
thing  else  called,  or  used,  as  a  measure  in  the  world's  business. 
Measures  and  weights — yards,  bushels,  and  pound-weights — do  not 


LAW   OF    WAGES.  91 

enter  into  the  exchanges  of  the  things  which  they  gauge,  but 
money  does,  as  a  thing  of  intrinsic  value,  or  as  representative  of 
some  valuable  medium.  Its  variableness  in  value,  therefore,  re 
quires  a  reduction  to  its  equivalents  in  the  commodities  of  the 
time,  or,  as  it  is  usually  expressed,  to  its  purchasing  power,  which 
must  be  ascertained  if  we  would  understand  the  real  under  the 
nominal  value.  This  equivalence  must  be  kept  in  mind,  and  be  as 
well  ascertained  as  may  be,  in  an  inquiry  into  the  relative  rates  of 
wages  paid  at  different  periods. 

For  our  purposes  we  must  depend  upon  the  authorities  in  the 
statistics  of  labor.  As  it  would  only  burden  the  examination  to 
carry  it  back  into  the  time  of  feudalism  in  Europe,  or  even  to  the 
transition  from  bondage  into  the  modern  condition  of  civil  freedom 
of  the  working  people,  we  shall  take  the  seventeenth  century  for  our 
starting  point,  and  for  the  facts  of  that  date,  we  may  with  great  con 
fidence  rely  upon  Mr.,  afterwards  Lord,  Macaulay.  He  fixes  four 
shillings  a  week,  without  food,  as  the  average  agricultural  wages, 
at  any  time  between  the  Restoration  (A.  D.  1660)  and  the  Revo 
lution  (1688).  In  1685  the  Justices  of  Warwickshire,  under 
authority  of  an  act  of  Elizabeth,  fixed  the  wages  of  the  common 
agricultural  laborer,  during  the  spring  and  summer,  at  four  shillings 
a  week,  without  food,  and  at  three  and  sixpence  for  the  fall  and 
winter  months.  In  the  south  of  England  the  rates  were  a  little 
higher,  and  about  the  centre  and  near  the  borders  of  Scotland  some 
thing  lower.  In  the  county  of  Essex  and  the  vicinity  of  London, 
the  Justices  allowed  six  shillings  in  winter,  and  seven  in  summer, 
for  the  year  1661,  which  our  author  says  was  the  highest  remunera 
tion  in  a  period  of  twenty  years,  but  it  happened  that  in  that  year 
the  necessaries  of  life  were  immoderately  dear.  Wheat  was  at 
seventy  shillings  the  quarter*  (eight  bushels),  which  he  adds,  would 
even  in  1848  be  considered  as  almost  a  famine  price. 

The  pay  of  workmen  employed  in  manufactures  is  always  higher 
than  that  of  tillers  of  the  soil.  In  1680,  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons  said  that  "  the  high  wages  paid  in  England  make  it  im 
possible  for  the  products  of  the  English  looms  to  compete  with  those 
of  India.  An  English  mechanic,  he  said,  instead  of  slaving  like  a 
native  of  Bengal  for  a  piece  of  copper,  exacts  a  shitting  a  day.  It 

*  The  average  of  the  monthly  prices  for  15  years,  1846-1860,  was  53s.  %\d. 
"  "  "         9     "        1857-1865,    "    48s.  4d. 


92  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

is  true  he  often  works  for  less,  but  this  sum  is  his  demand."  Mr. 
Macaulay,  from  all  the  evidence,  concludes  that,  "  in  the  generation 
which  preceded  the  Revolution  (1G88),  a  workman  employed  in  the 
great  staple  (woolens)  manufacture  of  England  thought  himself 
fairly  paid  if  he  gained  six  shillings  a  week." 

Coming  down  to  a  later  period  we  find,  by  the  register  of  the 
Greenwich  Hospital,  that  the  wages  of  such  mechanics  as  carpenters, 
bricklayers,  and  plumbers,  had  more  than  doubled  in  one  hundred 
and  twelve  years,  (from  1730  to  1842), — rising  very  regularly 
from  2s.  Q<1.  per  day,  to  5s.  8(7. ,  (McCulloch's  Com.  Diet.,  p.  1061). 

Thus  it  appears  by  this  last  quoted  author  (whose  doctrines  as 
an  economist,  as  we  have  given  them  in  a  former  chapter,  were 
directly  hostile  to  his  facts  as  a  statistician),  that  the  wages  of  all 
labor  estimated  in  money  were  in  1730  not  quite  half  of  what  they 
were  in  1842.  Meat  was  cheaper,  in  money,  it  is  true,  but  hun 
dreds  of  thousands  of  families  scarcely  knew  the  taste  of  it.  Wheat, 
as  early  as  the  last  twelve  years  of  Charles  II.  (1672-1685), 
a^raged  fifty  shillings  per  quarter,  and  during  a  like  period  one 
hundred  and  seventy  years  later  (1843-1855),  it  was  about  the 
same  price.  But  the  difference,  in  fact,  is,  that  bread  such  as  is  now 
given  to  the  inmates  of  a  British  workhouse,  was  seldom  seen  even 
on  the  table  of  a  yeoman  or  a  shop-keeper.  The  great  majority  of 
the  nation  lived  almost  entirely  on  rye,  barley,  and  oats.  (Macaulay 's 
Hist  Eng.,  vol.  1,  chap,  iii.) 

Here,  then,  we  see  that  in  England,  whose  limited  territory  makes 
her  dependent  upon  foreign  countries  for  full  one-fifth  of  her  food, 
in  this  prime  necessary  of  life,  the  wages  of  labor  have  risen  largely 
above  the  prices  of  the  required  supply,  while  in  all  other  things 
necessary  to  ordinary  comfort,  prices  have  gone  down  immensely, 
bringing  such  commodities  as  are  the  produce  of  tropical  countries, 
and  of  the  mines  and  manufactures  of  the  country,  within  the  pur 
chase  of  the  laborer  in  proportionate  abundance.  Sufficient  proof  of 
this  is  found  in  the  fact  that  the  prices  of  all  the  manifold  exports 
of  Great  Britain  declined  sixty  per  cent  in  thirty-five  years,  from  the 
year  1817  to  1852  ;  that  is,  of  all  the  articles  of  British  and  Irish 
produce  now  exported  to  foreign  countries,  comprised  under  a  hun 
dred  general  heads  or  classes  in  the  export  entries,  and  of  a  thou 
sand  specific  varieties,  one  dollar  will  now  purchase  as  much  as  two 
dollars  and  a  half  would  in  the  year  1817.  Cottons  only  are  ex- 


LAW    OF    WAGES.  93 

cepted,  and  even  these  are  twenty-five  per  cent  lower  than  in  1817, 
.and  will  take  rank  in  reduction  of  price  again  when  the  cotton 
supply  of  our  Southern  States  shall  be  restored  to  its  state  before 
our  civil  war. 

Now,  if  the  wages  of  such  a  country  as  England  doubled  in 
money  in  one  hundred  and  twelve  years,  and  wheat  and  all  other 
breadstuff's  remained  at  about  the  same  price,  while  only  flesh  meats 
became  dearer,  and  all  the  multiform  products  of  the  mining,  manu 
facturing,  and  mechanic  arts  fell  sixty  per  cent  in  the  last  thirty-five 
years  of  the  period,  and  all  the  products  of  tropical  climates  greatly 
decreased  in  price  also,  is  it  not  fully  established  that  labor  rises  in 
market  value  in  the  ratio  that  productiveness  increases  and  products 
abound  ? 

Tried  in  the  United  States,  where  labor  beyond  the  supply  is  in 
demand,  the  rise  of  wages  is  proportionately  greater  than  in  coun 
tries  not  so  favorably  circumstanced. 

We  shall  not  here  insist  upon  the  arithmetical  precision  of  the 
statistics  which  must  of  necessity  be  employed,  nor  need  we ;  our 
aim  is  only  to  show  conclusively  that  wages  do  rise  in  keeping  with 
the  profits  yielded  by  labor  combined  with  capital  in  the  modern 
system  of  production,  and  in  proportion  to  the  joint  productiveness. 
First,  then,  as  the  question  stands  in  the  United  States,  we  have  at 
least  an  approximate  valuation  of  the  elements  of  our  problem  in  the 
census  reports  of  1850  and  1860.  The  latter  being  more  accurate 
than  the  former,  its  data  will  be  more  particularly  relied  upon. 

The  total  products  of  manufactures  in  1860  were  valued  at 
$1^85,861,676.  The  annual  cost  of  labor  was  $378,878,266, 
which  is  twenty  and  one-tenth  per  cent  of  the  value  of  the  pro 
ducts.  The  cost  of  the  raw  materials  was  $1,031,6.05,092,  which 
leaves  but  $854,256,584,  of  which  labor  took  forty-four  and  three- 
tenths  per  cent,  leaving  to  capital  fifty-five  and  seven-tenths  per 
cent  of  the  value  of  the  products  over  the  labor  wages,  to  cover 
interest  upon  an  investment  of  $1,009,855,715,  interest  of  raw 
material  until  sale  of  the  products,  taxes,  superintendence,  losses 
upon  sales,  repairs,  insurance,  expenses,  and  net  profits. 

The  number  of  hands  employed  was  one  million,  forty  thousand 
three  hundred  and  forty-nine  males,  and  two  hundred  and  seventy 
thousand  eight  hundred  and  ninety-seven  females.  The  proportion 
of  wages  of  males  to  females  was  ascertained  in  1850  to  be  as  nine 


94  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

to  five.  We  have  taken  the  same  ratio  here  for  the  year  1860. 
This  rule  would  distribute  the  wages  of  the  year  thus  :  aggregate 
wages  of  all  males  employed  $330,996,917,  which  is  $318.16  per 
annum  averaged  to  each,  or  $1.02  for  every  working  day  (three 
hundred  and  twelve  in  the  year).  To  the  women,  a  total  of 
$47,881,349,  giving  to  each  an  average  of  $176.75  per  annum,  or 
fifty-seven  cents  per  day. 

In  the  year  1850,  according  to  the  census,  there  were  engaged 
in  manufactures  in  the  United  States  seven  hundred  and  thirty-one 
thousand  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven  males,  and  two  hundred 
and  twenty-five  thousand  nine  hundred  and  twenty-two  females. 
The  total  wages  paid  were  $202,066,770  to  the  male  operatives, 
which  gave  them  an  average  of  $276.37  per  annum,  $5. 31 2  per 
week,  and  eighty-eight  and  six-tenths  cents  for  each  working  day; 
to  the  women,  8153.54  for  the  year;  $2.95i  per  week,  and  forty- 
nine  and  one-fifth  cents  per  day.  Comparing  these  rates  with 
those  of  1860  we  find  that  wages  had  increased  fifteen  and  twelve- 
one-hundredths  per  cent  in  ten  years,  at  which  rate  they  would 
double  in  forty -seven  years.  Wages  of  skilled  labor  in  England, 
as  we  have  seen,  stood  at  double  after  one  hundred  and  twelve 
years.  Our  wealth  grows  now  at  the  rate  of  eight  and  one-half 
per  cent;  British  wealth  at  three  and  one-half  per  cent  per  annum. 
Here  we  have  a  remarkable  correspondence.  As  forty-seven  years 
is  to  three  and  a  half,  so  is  one  hundred  and  fourteen  years  to 
eight  and  one-half.  In  other  words,  if  English  wages  grow  in 
the  same  proportion  to  the  growth  of  English  wealth,  that  wages 
in  the  United  States  keep  to  their  increase  of  wealth,  they  should 
double  in  one  hundred  and  thirteen  years;  we  have  just  seen  that 
they  do  in  one  hundred  and  fourteen  years.  This  looks  very  like 
the  effect  of  a  universal  law,  that  is;  a  law  ruling  the  relation  of 
the  wages  of  skilled  labor  to  the  general  wealth  of  the  nation,  but 
it  is  by  no  means  the  law  of  the  relation  of  wages  to  the  capital 
employing  labor  in  manufacturing  industry.  Here  wages  not  only 
keep  pace  with  the  profits  of  capital,  but  gain  upon  those  profits, 
at  a  rate  of  constant  increase  that  will  not  be  arrested  until  such 
advance  shall  be  checked  by  reaching  the  point  at  which  capital 
can  yield  no  more  of  its  profits  to  labor.  Let  us  see  whether  we 
can  find  the  facts  that  prove  such  a  law  in  operation  among  the 
data  afforded  by  our  census  reports  : 


LAW    OF    WAGES.  95 

The  wages  paid  in 'i860,  as  already  stated,  were  an  advance  of 
fifteen  and  twelve  one-lmndredths  per  cent  over  those  of  1850, 
the  aggregate  increase  amounting  to  857,286.494.  Did  capital 
suffer  the  loss  of  this  sum  in  reduction  of  its  former  profits  ?  Or, 
if  it  neither  did  or  could  do  so,  how  was  this  fifty-seven  and  a 
quarter  millions  provided  for?  The  cost  of  material  and  wages  in 
1850  was  equal  to  seventy-seven  and  seven-tenths  per  cent  of  the 
value  of  the  products,  but  in  1860  these  items  of  expense  fell  to 
seventy-four  and  seventy-nine  one-hundredths  per  cent  of  the  total 
yield.  This  saving  refunded  to  capital  $54,830,464  of  the  advance 
of  wages,  and  left  a  loss  of  only  $2,456,030,  which  is  but  a  fraction 
over  one  per  cent  of  the  product.  Whence  came  this  fifty-four  and  a 
quarter  millions?  Not  from  an  increased  yield  of  the  material, 
for  curiously  enough,  the  materials  used  in  1850  bore  the  proportion 
fifty-four  and  forty-seven  one-hundredths  per  cent  to  the  value  of 
their  products,  and  those  of  I860  only  two-tenths  of  one  per  cent 
more,  or,  we  may  say,  exactly  the  same. 

The  following  tabular  statement  shows  the  sources  of  the  fund 
supplied  to  meet  the  advance  of  the  wages  : 

In  1850.  In  1860.  Decrease. 

Labor  took  of  the  products 23.23  per  cent. ..20. 10  per  cent. ..13. 80  per  cent. 

Labor  took  of   the  enhanced  \ 

value  of  products  over  cost  I  ...51.07       "        ...44.35       "        ....13.16       " 

of  material j 

Capital  took  of  the  enhanced  "J  Increase. 

value   of   the  product  over  >  ... 48. 93        "        ...55.64        "         ...13.71        " 

the  cost  of  the  material J 

Capital  took  of  the  enhanced  ^ 

value  of  the  products  over  I  ...22.29        "        ...25.20        "         ...13.05        " 

cost  of  materials  and  wages.  ) 

The  apparent  loss  of  labor  and  gain  of  capital  in  their  respective 
shares  of  the  product  shown  by  this  table,  very  accurately  provides 
for  the  actual  advance  of  wages  in  1860  (fifty-seven  and  one-quarter 
millions)  out  of  the  actual  gain  of  capital  (fifty-four  and  eight-tenths 
millions)  in  the  products,  with  the  loss  of  the  trivial  difference 
before  stated  (two  and  four-tenths  millions).  This  gain  in  products 
here  set  to  the  credit  of  capital,  did  not  come  out  of  an  increased 
yield  of  the  materials,  nor  could  it  have  come  out  of  the  wages  of 
labor,  for  these  were  greatly  increased;  it  must,  therefore,  have 
resulted  from  improved  machinery  and  methods  of  conversion  sup- 


96  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 


plied  by  capital,  and  at  its  expense.  The  sum.  fifty-four  and  eight- 
tenths  millions,  is  equal  to  a  fraction  less  than  three  per  cent  of 
the  value  of  the  products,  and  that  amount  of  improvement  in  the 
apparatus  and  management  of  the  manufactures  of  the  nation  in  a 
decade  is  every  way  probable.  That  we  put  the  credit  to  the  right 
account  is  further  supported  by  the  fact  that  the  wages  bore  the 
proportion  of  forty-one  and  forty-one  one-hundredths  per  cent  to 
the  cost  of  the  materials  used  in  1850,  but  in  1860  fell  to  thirty- 
six  and  seventy-two  oce-hundredths.  Thus  forty-eight  and  one- 
third  millions'  worth  of  work  at  the  rates  of  1850  was  transferred 
in  1860  from  human  hands  to  machinery,  and  at  the  advanced 
rates  of  1860  would  amount  to  fifty-five  and  seven-tenths  millions,  or 
barely  nine-tenths  of  a  million  more  than  the  sum  transferred  to 
the  credit  of  the  capitalists  who  supplied  the  machinery.  Subject 
to  the  inseparable  errors  of  statistical  data,  so  large  and  complex  as 
ours,  these  results  may  be  regarded  as  the  exactest  proofs  that  such 
subjects  are  capable  of. 

The  noteworthy  results  of  this  inquiry  are  these :  the  substitu 
tion  of  artificial  labor,  in  the  form  of  steam  or  water  force  and 
machinery,  for  muscular  toil,  relieves  the  laborer  of  so  much  mere 
muscle  force,  which  is  low  priced,  and  remits  him  to  the  higher 
styles  of  skill,  which  always  command  correspondingly  higher  rates 
of  wages,  which,  in  every  way  that  concerns  his  advancement,  is  so 
much  in  his  favor.  Again  :  machinery  adds  a  rate  of  speed,  and 
in  many  cases  a  degree  of  precision  in  the  execution  of  manufac 
turing  processes  which  human  hands  cannot  command,  increasing 
the  quantity  and  value  of  the  products,  and  so  increasing  the  fund 
from  which  wages  must  be  paid;  which,  under  the  operation  of 
other  laws  ruling  the  case,  insures  him  an  increase  of  his  distribu 
tive  share. 

These  propositions  on  their  face  seem  at  first  view  paradoxical, 
but  like  other  paradoxes,  in  abstract  statement,  opens  up  its  essen 
tial  facts  in  the  simplest  forms  of  truth. 

We  must  get  accustomed  to  look  through  the  alarms  of  innova 
tions  that  attend  the  progress  of  economical  affairs.  A  wagon  road 
displacing  the  pack-horse  system  of  transportation  across  the  Alle- 
ghenies,  threatened  destruction  to  the  horse-breeders  of  the  time. 
The  railroads  that  followed,  menaced  a  total  loss  of  occupation  to 
the  same  interest.  What  has  followed  these  changes  ?  Horses  dis- 


LAW   OF   WAGES.  9T 

charged  from  this  drudgery  have  been  advanced  to  work  requiring 
higher  qualities,  and,  behold  !  their  numbers  and  individual  value- 
have  been  multiplied  many  times.  In  like  manner,  when  a  machine 
is  introduced  that  displaces  nine  in  ten  of  the  laborers  before  oc 
cupied  in  the  work  to  be  done,  it  is  hastily  inferred  that  capital  is 
dispensing  more  and  more  with  human  labor;  yet  all  experience 
shows  that  wages  rise,  employment  enlarges,  and  products  cheapen 
at  the  same  time,  and  the  benefit  to  the  poor  is  in  the  aggregate 
much  greater  than  to  the  rich  !  Else  why  have  the  masses  risen  in 
condition,  step  by  step,  with  all  improvement  in  the  agencies  intro 
duced  into  the  modern  industries  ? 

Another  result  of  the  calculations  here  submitted  remains  to  be 
noticed.  We  found  by  our  figures  that  the  capitalists  in  1860 
received  a  trifle  less  from  the  enhanced  value  of  the  products  over 
the  cost  of  material  and  labor  than  the  increase  of  the  wages  paid — 
the  sum  of  $2,456,030.  To  this  must  be  added  the  interest  upon 
the  increased  capital  employed  ($482,646,522),  and  the  interest 
running  upon  the  increased  value  of  the  materials  ($476,481,370), 
from  the  date  of  their  purchase  until  the  sale  of  their  products, 
with  whatever  of  other  increased  expenses  the  extension  of  the  busi 
ness  added.  These  items  cannot  be  calculated  from  any  data  at 
hand,  but  they  must  have  aggregated  at  least  fifty  millions. 

Again  comes  the  question,  did  the  capitalists  lose  this  estimated 
fifty  millions,  or  suffer  such  an  abatement  of  their  former  profits  ? 
Let  us  for  the  purpose  of  trying  this  question,  call  the  difference 
between  the  cost  of  materials  and  the  cost  of  labor  together,  and  the 
value  of  the  products,  profits.  It  appears  that  such  profits  in  1850 
were  equal  to  twenty-eight  and  seven-tenths  per  cent  of  the  total 
yield,  but  in  1860  they  rose  to  thirty-three  per  cent.  The  gain  in 
amount  is  a  trifle  over  eighty-one  millions,  and  the  fifty  millions 
additional  expense  here  estimated,  would  leave  to  capital  a  clear  in 
creased  gain  of  thirty-one  millions. 

Thus,  on  the  basis  of  the  facts  and  figures  here  used,  is  demon 
strated  the  increased  yield  to  both  capital  and  labor  of  improved 
methods  of  conversion  in  manufacturing,  mining,  and  mechanical 
industry;  labor  gaining  fifteen  and  twelve  one-hundredths  per  cent 
upon  its  smaller  principal  in  ten  years,  and  the  capitalist  upon  his 
greatly  larger  principal  but  five  per  cent. 

Mr.  Carey's  general  statement  of  the  law  of  distribution  is  thus 


98  QUESTIONS   OF    THE    DAY. 

verified  iu  one  grand  province  of  its  operation.  It  may  be  found 
supported  by  the  context  with  great  amplitude  of  demonstration  in 
his  "Social  Science,"  vol.  iii..  p.  139.  We  here  condense  his 
formula :  "  With  the  growth  of  wealth  and  numbers,  the  power  of 
"  combination  increases  with  great  increase  in  the  productiveness  of 
"  labor,  and  in  the  power  of  accumulation — every  step  in  that 
11  direction  being  attended  by  decline  in  the  power  of  the  already 
"  existing  capital  to  command  the  services  of  the  laborer,  and  by 
"  the  increase  of  power  on  the  part  of  the  latter  to  command  the  aid 
"of  capital." 

"  The  proportion  of  the  increased  product  of  labor  assigned  to  the 
"  laborer  tends,  thus,  steadily  to  increase,  while  that  of  the  capitalist 
"  tends  as  regularly  to  decline.  The  quantity  assigned  to  both  in- 
"  creases — that  of  the  laborer  growing,  however,  far  more  rapidly 
11  than  that  retained  by  the  capitalist." 

"  The  tendency  to  equality  is,  therefore,  in  the  direct  ratio  of  the 
<l  growth  of  wealth,  and  consequent  productiveness  of  labor." 

We  cannot  leave  this  discussion  without  calling  attention  to  its 
highest  and  happiest  result — the  harmony  of  interests  really  sub 
sisting  and  working  toward  the  most  beneficent  issue,  under  the 
system  of  relations  between  capital  and  labor  which  are  unhappily 
marked  by  so  much  hostility  of  the  parties  as  the  world  still  wit 
nesses — the  employer  gaining  larger  profit  from  increase  of  the 
wages  paid,  and  the  laborer  sharing  in  the  product  from  the  aid  of 
capital  cooperating,  and  on  both  sides,  in  proportion  to  all  improve 
ments  in  the  processes  attained,  with  the  assurance  that  their  pro 
spective  fortunes  are  under  the  government  of  the  same  law. 

Let  us  now  look  at  the  operation  of  this  law  as  it  rules  among 
different  classes  and  conditions  of  laborers.  That  the  wages  of  men 
have  doubled  as  reckoned  in  money  in  the  United  States  since  the 
general  introduction  of  steam  and  modern  machinery,  say  in  the 
year  1814,  will  be  readily  admitted;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  the 
wages  of  women  have  tripled  in  the  same  time;  and  this  not  alone 
by  the  transfer  of  their  industry  from  the  household  to  the  factory, 
where  capital  directly  aids  its  efficiency,  but  domestic  service  has 
received  an  equal  increase  of  remuneration,  as  measured  by  the  cir 
culating  medium.  The  reason  of  this  is,  that  a  rise  in  value  in  any 
branch  of  business  necessarily  pulls  up  all  related  branches  with  it. 
It  is  plain  enough  that  if  a  new  demand  is  made  for  the  labor  of 


LAW    OF    WAGES.  99 

women,  all  are  invited  to  accept  its  tempting  offers,  and  those  who 
remain  in  their  accustomed  engagements  must  be  made  to  find  their 
account  in  it.  There  is  also  a  less  obvious  influence  always  at  work 
which  tends  to  level  up  all  the  members  of  a  class  toward  the  con 
dition  of  the  most  favored.  Opinion  has  much  to  do  in  fixing  values 
in  all  things,  and  whatever  people  generally  believe  they  must  have 
for  their  work,  they  must  get,  if  the  employers  can  afford  it.  Those 
who  need  the  best  service  pay  its  higher  price,  and  this  becomes  the 
standard  of  demand,  and  soon  regulates  the  opinion  and  conscience 
of  the  pay-masters. 

But  there  is  another  reason  why  the  lowest  rank  in  earnings 
should  rise  faster  than  those  more  advanced.  The  better  part  of 
any  class  of  laborers  always  have  received  as  high  prices  as  the  em 
ployer  can,  or  thinks  he  can  at  the  time  afford,  and  the  rise  of  these 
will  just  keep  pace  with  the  rise  in  worth  of  their  work,  while  those 
who  formerly  could  command  nothing,  nor  make  any  terms  with 
those  who  gave  them  employment,  when  changed  conditions  come, 
and  they  begin  to  be  wanted,  shoot  up  more  rapidly  in  proportion 
to  the  greater  distance  they  must  rise.  For  this  very  reason  we 
may  look  for  a  greater  celerity  of  progress  among  the  lately  emanci 
pated  negroes  of  the  South,  than  we  can  expect  for  the  people  who 
made  an  earlier  start — where  the  capital  is  small,  accretions  of  the 
same  value  are  a  much  larger  per  cent  of  increase,  than  where  a 
little  is  added  to  a  greater  amount.  The  addition  of  one  to  two 
makes  an  increase  of  fifty  per  cent,  the  addition  of  one  to  a  hun 
dred  is  but  one  per  cent. 

We  are  as  nearly  correct  as  the  nature  of  the  question  admits  of, 
in  stating  that  the  labor  wages  of  artisans  in  the  United  States  in 
creased  one  hundred  per  cent  in  money  value  from  the  year  1814  to 
to  1860.  We  take  the  year  1814  for  the  first  of  the  new  era  of 
manufacturing  industry,  because  the  power  loom  was  first  intro 
duced  at  Waltham,  Massachusetts,  in  that  year,  and  steam  began 
soon  after  to  be  generally  applied  in  the  various  processes  of  produc 
tion  in  the  mechanic  arts ;  and  for  the  further  reason  that,  from  and 
after  that  year  the  remarkable  fall  of  prices  is  noticed  in  the  reports 
of  British  exports  in  all  the  manufactures  of  the  United  King 
dom  ;  and  we  take  the  year  1860  for  our  latest  date,  in  order  to 
avoid  the  general  disturbance  of  our  home  markets  by  the  war  of 
the  Rebellion,  and  by  the  suspension  of  specie  payments  at  the  close 


100  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

of  the  following  year.  Whoever  will  look  over  the  lists  of  current 
prices  of  the  principal  commodities  for  any  period  of  twenty  or 
thirty  or  forty  years  within  the  present  century,  will  be  convinced 
that  there  are  many  causes  of  fluctuation,  casual  and  temporary, 
which  disturb  his  estimates  of  permanent  and  normal  changes,  and 
render  the  figures  commonly  quoted  by  partisans  of  conflicting 
theories  so  liable  to  yield  support  to  either  side  of  any  question  for 
which  they  are  appealed  to  for  confirmation.  The  statistics,  by  skill 
or  blunder  in  selection  of  dates  and  periods,  may  be  manipulated 
so  as  to  prove  anything  that  the  uncandid  or  the  incapable  may 
choose  to  demonstrate.  Indeed,  nothing  but  the  most  general  and 
the  most  comprehensive  views  derived  from  the  records  deserve  reli 
ance.  Periods  worthy  to  be  examined  for  instruction,  or  quoted  for 
proofs,  ought  to  be  large  enough  to  embrace  all  the  changes  which 
time  and  chance  usually  can  considerably  modify,  in  order  that  the 
fluctuations  of  rise  and  fall  may  be  embraced  in  all  their  bearings 
upon  the  question  at  issue. 

For  instance :  common  English  bar  iron  in  England  varied 
from  £8  per  ton  in  1822  to  £15  in  1825 ;  from  £5  10s.  in  1832  to 
£10  15s.  in  1836;  from  £4  10s.  in  1843  to  £10  in  1845;  and,  from 
£9  10s.  in  1847  to  £5  5s.  in  1849.  In  such  an  up-and-down  flut 
ter  as  this,  specialties  run  into  contradictions,  and  deductions  are 
confused  and  false.  But  such  facts  as  these  broader  ones  are  not 
doubtful :  in  1783  mineral  coal  was  substituted  for  charcoal  in  the 
manufacture  of  bar  iron,  and  in  the  following  year  the  rolling  mill 
was  invented.  Previously,  for  many  years,  the  price  of  iron  had 
been  steady  at  from  £17  to  £18  per  ton.  In  1829  the  hot  blast 
was  used,  effecting  a  great  saving  in  fuel,  and  the  price  went  down 
to  £7  10s.  for  the  next  six  years;  and  a  succession  of  improve 
ments  through  the  ensuing  fifteen  years  marks  the  tendency  down 
ward  by  rates  running  as  low  as  £7  5s.  in  the  first  half  of  the 
period,  and  an  average  of  £6  in  the  closing  year  1850. 

Iron  has  been,  perhaps,  subject  to  greater  and  more  rapid  vicis 
situdes  of  price  than  any  other  article,  for  the  reason  that  it  was 
put  under  constantly  increasing  protective  duties  by  the  policy  of 
England  from  1787  (about  the  date  of  the  great  improvement  in  its 
manufacture)  until  1826.  A  part  of  this  period  of  near  forty  years, 
its  most  important  forms  were  prohibited  in  terms,  and  the  duty 
rising  through  the  period  to  full  fifty  per  cent  upon  the  kinds 


LAW    OF    WAGES.  101 

admitted,  was  in  effect  quite  as  prohibitory.  After  safety  from 
all  foreign  competition  was  secured  its  price  was,  and  is  to  the 
present  day,  still  more  wildly  variable  under  the  policy  of  holding 
its  foreign  markets  by  gorging  them  at  losing  rates,  and  recovering 
the  losses  again  by  enormous  changes  in  price,  when,  and  as  long 
as  it  could,  hold  them  monopolized. 

But  all  commodities  are  influenced  more  or  less  by  the  policy  of 
the  mercantile  and  manufacturing  nations.  Such  manufactures  as 
depend  for  their  raw  materials  upon  the  seasons;  as  they  variably 
affect  the  agricultural  products  used ;  and,  again,  by  the  effect  of 
the  seasons  upon  the  food  required  by  laborers ;  and,  again,  by 
wars,  periods  of  mercantile  speculation,  and  the  condition  of  the 
currency — all  these  causes  play  upon  prices,  and  vary  them  from 
the  lowest  possibilities  of  the  producer,  to  the  highest  prices  that 
the  consumer  can  bear. 

For  all  these  reasons  we  would  avoid  the  incertitude,  as  well  as 
the  imposture  of  the  arithmetic  of  market  statistics,  by  choosing 
our  data  from  the  broadest  and  safest  groups  of  facts;  and,  while 
we  do  not  refuse  the  assistance  and  the  guidance  of  such  records, 
carefully  examined  and  interpreted,  we  resort  with  still  more  confi 
dence  to  the  clearer  and  truer  experiences  which  get  no  record 
except  in  general  observation. 

We  have  said  that  women's  wages  have  risen  threefold  in  money 
price  since  1814.  It  will  be  recollected  that  fifty  years  ago  house 
service  did  not  command  more  than  sixty-two  and  a  half  cents  per 
week,  and  rose  in  the  average  to  at  least  $1.75  in  1860.  To  show 
the  value  of  these  prices,  respectively,  we  submit  the  following 
statement  of  the  market  values,  and  the  quantities  of  certain 
articles  of  clothing  required,  which  these  different  amounts  of 
wages  would  command : 

Money  Wages  in  1814,  62-i  cents.  Money  Wages  In  1860,  $1.75. 

1  yard  of  dimity     at     62£  cents 7  yards  at  25  cents. 

2  "      sheeting  "      31i     "     U  "     12i     " 

2i        "      calico       "     25       "     14  "     12^     " 

2i        «      shirting  "      25       "     17*          "     10       " 

Other  articles  of  dress,  if  not  equally,  had  at  least  very  greatly 
fallen  in  the  market.  With  the  price  of  food  and  lodging  she  was 
not  concerned,  in  any  way,  except  as  to  quality,  which,  with  other 
things,  was  constantly  improving.  In  general  terms,  we  will  be 


102  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

sustained  by  the  memories  that  cover  the  whole  period  of  this  great 
change,  in  saying  that  the  hired  women  reached  in  these  fifty  years 
enjoyments  that  would  have  cost  them  at  least  six  times  the  amount 
of  their  wages  at  the  beginning  of  the  period. 

With  respect  to  the  advance  in  the  real  wages  of  men,  it  is  to  be 
remarked  that  the  doubling  of  their  remuneration  gives  them  at 
least  a  fourfold  command  of  all  that  part  of  their  consumption 
which  has  undergone  the  improved  methods  of  production.  Four 
fold  is  not  enough  to  allow  when  we' recollect  that  all  the  multiform 
productions  of  British  industry  have  fallen  sixty  per  cent,  which 
increases  the  purchasing  power  of  the  same  money  two  and  a 
half  times,  and  the  wages  being  doubled,  we  have  a  fivefold  pur 
chasing  power  as  to  these  items.  Some  other  indispensable  things 
he  has  now  for  nothing,  and  the  best  of  them  at  rates  that  put  even 
the  lowest  rank  of  self-supporting  people  on  a  level  with  the  wealth 
iest  of  fifty  years  ago.  He  has  these  things  in  a  free  system  of 
common  schools ;  in  the  street  accommodations  of  light,  and  police 
security;  in  travel  and  transportation,  cheapened  down  to  his  means ; 
in  the  newspapers,  periodicals,  and  books  which  formerly  only  the 
wealthy  class  could  well  afford ;  in  the  accessibility  of  other  means 
of  instruction,  refinement,  and  enjoyment,  not  forgetting  the  general 
respect  and  its  advantages,  which  so  great  an  improvement  in  per 
sonal  conditions  insures. 

Thus  much  as  a  hint,  for  it  falls  very  short  of  an  array,  of  the 
benefits  brought  to  every  man  by  the  joint  achievements  of  labor, 
capital,  skill,  and  science  in  the  last  half  century. 

The  proportion  of  food  to  all  necessaries  other  than  house  rent, 
is,  of  course,  a  variable  quantity,  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  under  the 
normal  rates  of  the  period  previous  to  1860,  it  did  not  overpass  the 
cost  of  these,  and  that  such  food  as  was  used  in  1814  was  as  costly 
then  as  the  better  supply  of  the  later  date.  The  groceries  of  tropi 
cal  climates  had  greatly  declined  in  price ;  so  much  so,  that  tea  and 
coffee  had  come  into  universal  use ;  sugar  had  fallen  at  least  fifteen 
per  cent;  flesh  meats  increased,  perhaps,  twenty-five  per  cent;  vege 
tables,  generally;  and  flour  fluctuating  considerably,  but  hovering 
about  the  same  rates  at  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  period.  If 
this  is  correct  as  to  food,  that  is,  if  the  improved  food  cost  no  more 
in  the  aggregate  than  the  inferior  supply  of  fifty  years  ago,  that 
portion  of  the  wages  which  must  be  so  applied,  being  doubled  be- 


LAW    OF    WAGES.  103 

tween  the  dates  assumed,  was,  in  effect,  reduced  to  one  half  the 
real  expenditure,  or  allowed  a  double  indulgence.  Food  in  the  con 
sumption  of  the  tolerably  circumstanced  artisan  is  not  the  half  of 
his  consumption  of  commodities;  therefore,  for  more  than  half  his 
wants  he  has  a  fivefold  provision  in  his  enhanced  real  wages,  and 
in  respect  to  food,  twofold.  These  surpluses  leave  a  very  large 
margin  beyond  the  increase  of  his  house  rent. 

The  calculation  would  stand  thus :  as  against  the  purchasing 
power  of  wages  in  1814,  that  of  18GO  was,  after  reducing  the  other 
items  equally  to  make  up  for  the  probable  doubling  of  his  rent — 

$50  worth  of  food  in  1814 $  85  47  worth  in  1860. 

50  worth  of  other  commodities  in  1814...     1J4  53  "        " 

58  house  rent  in  1814 110  00  "        " 

$158  annual  wages $316  00  annual  wages. 

This  division  of  the  excess  of  the  wages  applied  to  food  and  other 
commodities  is  not  given  as  the  determinate  distribution  that  would 
be  made  of  it.  The  two  classes  (food  and  other  commodities)  are 
here  put  at  equal  sums — fifty  dollars  each  in  1814,  and  probably 
the  necessity  of  the  case  arising  out  of  the  limits  of  the  fund  would 
oblige  as  great  an  expenditure  for  food,  at  the  expense  of  a  severe 
economy  in  clothing  and  the  like  things,  but  the  greater  stock  of 
wages,  ($200  against  $100),  and  the  greatly  less  cost  of  textile 
fabrics  and  other  manufactures  in  1860  would  allow  $100  for  food, 
and  the  other  hundred,  as  it  now  purchases  two  and  a  half  times  the 
quantity  afforded  by  850  in  1814,  would  permit  expenditure  in  this 
direction  to  be  pushed  to  this  limit  in  this  class  of  commodities. 
The  ratio  of  appropriation  would  be  a  matter  of  choice,  or  would 
be  determined  by  circumstances.  We  are  only  concerned  to  show 
that  the  wages  of  1860  provide  a  surplus  of  $100  over  those  of 
1814.  If  this  is  clear,  then,  our  point  is  made,  that  the  support 
ing  or  purchasing  power  of  wages  doubled  in  forty-six  years  as  to 
all  things  except  house  rent,  and  including  house  rent,  increased  in 
real  value  sixty-three  and  one-third  per  cent. 

We  have  said  that  wages  double  in  money  price  once  in  forty- 
seven  years.  But  in  real  value,  when  surcharged  with  the  increas 
ing  value  of  land,  and  of  its  rent,  it  will  take  fifty-five  years  to 
double,  at  the  rate  of  change  in  prices  of  rent,  of  commodities  and 
labor,  during  the  last  half  century.  All  of  which  accords  with 


104  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

the  primary  propositions : — wages  are  the  index  of  productiveness, 
the  former  enhancing,  by  a  law  of  the  subjects,  with  the  increase 
of  the  latter ;  and,  the  other  general  principle,  that  in  progressive 
communities  nothing  can  normally  increase  in  value  but  land  and 
labor. 

It  will  be  observed  by  those  who  have  a  turn  for  the  figures  of 
statistics,  and  especially  by  those  who  innocently  imagine  that 
arithmetic  gives  its  own  exactitude  to  the  measure  and  meaning  of 
the  facts  to  which  it  is  so  applied,  that  we  have  spoken  of  the 
doubling  of  American  money  wages  as  requiring  a  period  of  forty- 
six  years  when  estimating  their  purchasing  power  over  commodi 
ties  other  than  food  and  lodging  in  the  years  1814  and  1860;  and, 
that  we  extend  the  period  to  forty-seven  years,  when  we  estimate 
the  period  of  duplication  by  the  rate  of  their  rise  in  the  decade 
1850-60. 

We  let  these  differences  stand.  It  would  be  easy  to  force  a  com 
promise  agreement,  and  deliver  a  definite  and,  perhaps,  even  a  more 
exact  result.  The  data  are  in  their  nature  elastic  enough  to  admit 
of  equalization ;  but  the  inexpert  would  only  be  deceived  into  an 
undue  confidence  in  the  cipherings  of  political  economy.  It  is  im 
possible  to  decide  whether  1813,  1814,  1818,  or  1820  marks  the 
effective  beginning  of  the  new  era  in  manufacturing  productive 
ness.  Nothing  so  sudden  ever  takes  place,  all  over  the  civilized 
world,  as  will  fix  the  precise  year  when  some  grand  epoch  in  discovery 
gets  itself  realized  in  business  affairs.  We  have  taken — as  we  must 
take,  some  definite  date — the  year  1814  for  the  point  of  departure 
for  the  reason  that  then  the  products  of  British  industry  commenced 
that  permanent  drift  of  cheapening  which  has  since  gone  forward 
with  great  uniformity  in  spite  of  all  disturbing  influences,  until  the 
increase  of  converting  skill  and  agencies  have  reduced  the  average 
price  full  sixty  per  cent.  If  the  decided  change  began  a  little 
later  in  the  United  States,  it  has  progressed  proportionably  faster 
in  the  whole  compass  of  the  period. 

Further  to  clear  up  the  data  adopted,  it  should  be  seen  that  the 
average  expenditure  of  artisans,  fixed  for  the  year  1814,  is  exposed 
to  cross-questioning  from  various  positions  which  critics  may  as 
sume.  One  hundred  and  fifty-eight  dollars  wages  per  annum  is  an 
average,  or  is  intended  for  an  average,  only;  though  based  upon 
the  official  reports  of  the  census-takers  of  the  time;  and,  as  an 


LAW    OF    WAGES.  105 

average,  will  accord  with  the  observation  or  experience  of  very  few 
individuals.  The  same  things  are  true  of  the  average  three  hun 
dred  and  sixteen  dollars  for  the  year  18GO.  Yet  objections,  how 
ever  well  taken  to  the  specific  sums  allowed,  are  nothing  against 
the  deductions  drawn  from  them.  Though  they  be  wrong  in 
amounts,  they  are  very  probably  right  in  proportion  to  each  other, 
and  rectification  of  such  amounts  will  not  affect  the  percentage  of 
increase,  which  is  the  thing  required  in  this  discussion. 

The  distribution  of  the  wages  among  the  classes  of  necessary  ex 
penditure  is  more  embarrassing,  and  more  important,  in  reaching 
the  actual  result.  Food  is  much  cheaper  in  some  parts  of  the 
United  States  than  in  others,  while  manufactures  are  not  materially 
different  in  price.  The  proportions  of  expenditure  upon  these 
classes  of  commodities  must,  therefore,  vary  accordingly;  and  this 
will  affect  the  real  value  of  wages.  Again :  even  in  the  same  place, 
and  at  the  same  prices,  the  circumstances  and  the  taste  of  the 
laborers  will  induce  a  various  relative  proportion  of  expenditure 
upon  them,  and  so  produce  a  difference  of  surplus  to  meet  the 
enhanced  charge  of  rent. 

Moreover,  the  sums  or  amounts  of  annual  wages  allowed  for  both 
periods  are  obviously  too  low,  and  this  must  be  rectified  to  the  cases 
before  a  just  judgment  can  be  formed.  Nevertheless  the  point  to 
be  met  remains  unaffected — the  positive  increase  of  wages,  and  that 
they  increase  in  the  ratio  of  the  general  increase  of  the  national 
wealth,  but  much  more  rapidly  than  the  profits  of  capital  employ 
ing  labor  in  the  manufacturing,  mining  and  mechanic  arts;  and  at 
various  rates  in  other  industries,  with  a  tendency  in  all  branches  to 
a  fair  equality  of  dividend  in  the  fruits  of  labor  and  capital  com 
bined.  Under  these  modifications  the  proposition  that  wages  are 
the  index  of  productiveness,  is  made  good. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

MONEY  AND   ITS   FUNCTIONS — AS   AN   EXCHANGER   OF   VALUES. 

Money  and  its  function  as  an  exchanger  of  values :  Production  denned. — 
Nature's  forces  in  the  mastery  of  natural  substances. — Instruments  employed  in 
effecting  changes  of  form  and  place. — Transportation,  difficulties,  and  cost  of; 
social  effects;  improvement  of  in  proportion  to  increase  of  population  and 
wealth. — Improvement  in  distribution  of  products  ;  freight  the  impediment. — 
Transportation  and  conversion  improve  pari  passu. — Drudgery  and  slavery. — 
Emancipation  by  machinery. — Freedom  of  exchange  and  freedom  of  man. — 
India  enslaved  by  cost  of  freight. — Abridgment  of  transportation  and  elimina 
tion  of  middle-men. — Simple  barter  the  type  of  a  true  commerce. — A  common 
representative  of  values  required  to  remove  impediments. — Money,  the  medium 
of  exchanges. — Kinds  of  money. — The  precious  metals;  their  befitting  quali 
ties. — Change  of  exchange  value  in  long  periods,  but  still  the  best  security  for 
creditors,  although  it  lessens  the  value  of  debts. — Small  coins. — Money  as  an 
agent  of  transportation. — Money  not  a  standard  of  value ;  only  a  conventional 
standard  of  payment. — Why. — Great  change  of  market  value  in  long  periods. — 
Estimates  difficult. — Prices  two  centuries  ago,  and  change  of  nominal  value  in 
coins. — Reduced  value  since  the  eleventh  century,  reduced  cost  of  production 
in  the  period. — Exchange  value  of  silver  eighteen  hundred  years  ago. — A  com 
mon  and  permanent  standard  of  values  impossible. — The  labor  cost  of  precious 
metals  not  ascertainable;  causes  specially  affecting  cost  of  mining  them. — 
Equivalence  of  value  in  the  supply  of  money  and  totality  of  things  in  ex 
change,  fallacious. — False  analogy  to  paper  money — the  differences.— Excess  of 
paper  money  explodes  it  as  a  currency. — No  increase  of  coin  lessens  its  ex 
change  value. — Prices  of  other  things  decline  under  its  increase — the  reverse 
of  its  supposed  effect. — The  law  of  "supply  and  demand"  at  fault  here. — 
Coin  in  exchange  is  payment ;  paper  money  only  a  promise  to  pay. — The 
one  an  existing  real  value;  the  other  an  anticipation  of  values. — Business 
alarms  depreciate  paper,  but  appreciate  metallic  money. — Value  of  coin 
fluctuates  only  under  changes  in  cost  of  production. — Increase  in  Europe,  in 
three  centuries,  thirtyfold. — Coinage  in  England  before  and  after  1850 — in  the 
United  States  seven  times  greater. — No  depreciation  under  so  vast  and  rapid 
an  increase. — Adam  Smith's  testimony. — Demand  not  fixed  independently; 
relation  to  supply  wanting. — Money  not  consumed ;  consumption  of  the  things 
it  buys  quite  immeasurable. — Outlets  for  its  use. — Thousands  of  millions  of 
commodities  ready  to  absorb  hundreds  of  millions  of  added  money. — Cash 
payments  in  lieu  of  credit. — Not  the  value  of  money,  but  the  credit  system 
affected  by  its  influx. — The  use  of  money  supplanted  by  other  means  of  pay- 
106 


MONEY  AS  AN  EXCHANGER  OF  VALUES.        107 

ment. — Money  of  account. — Clearing  houses  pay  by  offset. — New  York  banks 
thus  settle  ninety-five  per  cent  of  their  mutual  claims. — Money  only  needed  to 
pay  profits. — Business  in  England  done  with  less  money,  in  inverse  proportion 
to  values  in  exchange. — Rapidity  of  circulation  does  not  explain  the  fact. 

THE  power  of  man  over  matter  is  limited  to  change  of  form  and 
change  of  place.  Both  these  changes  are  necessary,  in  various 
degrees,  and  almost  universally,  in  his  use  of  the  primitive  sub 
stances  which  nature  furnishes  for  his  service.  Change  of  form, 
including  change  of  properties,  and  change  of  place>  are  both 
included  in  the  word  production.  Ore  or  coal  or  lime  delivered 
at  the  pit's  mouth,  are  produced.  The  ore  and  coal  and  lime  being 
put  through  the  furnace,  iron,  by  change  of  form,  is  produced. 
The  iron  transported  to  a  distant  market  is  there,  by  change  of 
place,  produced.  By  the  change  of  form,  utility  is  subserved ;  by 
the  change  of  place,  use  is  effected. 

Production,  whether  in  form  or  place,  looks  to  exchange  of  values 
for  all  marketable  commodities  beyond  the  consumption  of  the 
producers.  The  whole  life  of  man  is  a  round  of  exchanges — between 
his  body  and  the  elements  of  subsistence — between  the  individual 
and  his  kind,  in  services  moral,  mental,  and  material,  in  their 
varied  ministries. 

Man  compels  nature  into  service,  for  the  most  part,  by  the  use  of 
power-multiplying  instruments,  thus  employing  the  forces  of  nature 
in  one  form  against  her  resistance  in  another.  Mind  is  qualified  for 
its  proper  sovereignty  by  its  power  of  converting  some  of  the  natural 
agencies  into  simper-natural  forces,  and  all  of  them  by  ingenuity  of 
application  into  controlling  forces. 

The  instruments  employed  in  effecting  changes  of  form  are  such 
as  ploughs,  mills,  furnaces,  steam  engines,  and  generally,  all  mechan 
ical  and  chemical  agencies  of  which  he  has  the  mastery.  The  in 
struments  of  transportation  are  such  as  horses,  wagons,  rail  car 
riages,  ships,  currents  of  water,  air,  and  electricity. 

When  these  have  performed  their  offices  the  producers  are  ready 
for  exchanges  of  values,  or,  in  more  suggestive  terms,  exchange  of 
services,  as  these  are  embodied  in  their  commodities. 

In  the  earlier  and  ruder  stages  of  commerce  the  change  of  place 
is  generally  the  greater  part  of  the  cost  of  production.  Navigable 
waters  abridge  the  expense  of  transportation,  but  inland  or  overland 
carriage  absorbs  nearly  the  whole  prime  value,  or  doubles  the  cost  of 


108  QUESTIONS   OP   THE   BAY. 

the  product.  Improvement  and  extension  of  navigation  in  this  state 
of  trade  makes  princes  of  merchants,  as  in  ancient  Tyre,  and  in 
middle  age  Venice  and  Genoa,  and  producer  and  consumer  are  alike 
kept  poor.  Monopoly  of  transportation  and  of  exchange  have  the 
Bame  mischievous  tendency  in  the  most  advanced  states  of  society. 

The  natural  process  of  improvement  follows  increase  of  popula 
tion  and  wealth.  The  foot-path  widens  into  a  carriage  road ;  then  it 
is  graded  and  paved,  and  finally,  iron  tramways  diminish  friction, 
and  the  locomotive  engine  replaces  the  six-horse  team  as  it  had 
supplanted  the  pack-horse.  Now  the  transporter  takes  less  and  the 
producer  gets  more  of  the  price  given  by  the  consumer  for  the 
articles  produced  at  market.  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however, 
that  the  cost  of  carriage  ever  remains  so  much  dead  loss  to  the 
prime  producer,  and  an  equivalent  tax  upon  the  Consumer.  Freight 
is  the  thing  to  be  diminished,  and,  wherever  it  can  be,  entirely 
abolished,  in  the  progressive  improvement  of  necessary  exchanges. 

There  is  a  corresponding  progress  to  be  effected  in  the  work  of 
changing  the  forms  of  things  for  use,  and  these  two  changes  are 
found  going  forward  in  a  near  approach  to  equal  measure.  In  the 
savage  state  the  quantity  of  labor  required  to  convert  grain  into 
bread  is  very  great — it  means  drudgery  and  enslavement.  The 
stone  pestle  and  mortar  must  give  way  to  the  flouring  mill;  the 
hand-wheel  and  loom  to  the  spinning-jenny  and  power-loom,  and  at 
last,  hammers,  saws,  and  files  to  steam-driven  rollers,  lathes,  saws, 
and  chisels.  Labor  must  be  saved  in  manufacturing  and  forward 
ing — in  change  of  form  and  of  place.  Capital  accumulated  must 
work  for  those  who  have  worked  for  it.  The  reluctant  natural 
agents  must  be  yoked  to  machinery  in  production,  in  relief  of  toil 
and  in  the  elevation  of  labor  in  uses  and  benefits.  Society  must 
be  organized;  its  members  must  be  so  related  in  industry  and  in 
commerce,  that  all  impediments  to  the  freest,  cheapest,  directest 
possible  exchange  of  services  may  be  removed. 

The  poverty  of  India,  once  the  leading  manufacturing  people  of 
the  earth,  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  policy  of  British  rule 
forces  its  people  to  send  their  cotton  wool  five  thousand  miles 
direct,  or  more  than  twice  as  far  by  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  to 
find  the  spindle,  and  to  bring  the  cloth  all  the  way  back  again,  for 
such  market  as  it  may  find  at  Bombay.  Calcutta,  or  Delhi,  at  the 
foot  of  the  Himalaya  Mountains. 


MONEY  AS    AN    EXCHANGER    OF    VALUES.  109 

The  gains  of  a  close  neighborhood  of  the  prime  producer  and 
consumer  are  larger,  greatly  larger,  than  those  to  be  expected  from 
the  greatest  possible  improvement  of  roads  and  conveyances;  for 
closeness,  pro  tanto,  abolishes  transportation  and  eliminates  tlie 
middle-man,  and  with  him,  his  frauds  and  profits.  It  is  best  even 
in  the  rude  stage  of  commerce  in  which  services  are  exchanged 
through  their  representative  commodities,  without  the  intervention 
of  the  merchant  class. 

This  simple  barter  is  the  type  of  a  true  commerce,  for  it  is  the 
very  thing  to  be  attained ;  and  the  best  method  of  effecting  such 
exchange  is  the  aim,  and  remains  the  hope  of  the  highest  civilization. 

The  natural  hindrance  to  this,  the  purest  and  best  form  of  ex 
change,  is  that,  the  man  who  has  blankets  to  spare  may  not  want 
the  venison  or  furs  which  the  hunter  must  buy  them  with ;  and  so 
of  the  millar,  the  blacksmith,  tailor,  doctor,  lawyer,  and  preacher. 
They  cannot  take  exactly  the  thing,  or  the  exact  quantity  of  the 
thing,  which  the  customer  has  to  give  in  exchange.  Somebody 
else,  however,  wants  the  venison  or  furs,  which  the  hunter  offers 
for  the  cloth,  cutlery,  or  other  commodity  or  service,  required;  and 
if  all  the  producers  could  be  brought  together,  in  fact,  as  at  a  fair, 
or  in  effect,  by  some  other  means,  more  frequently  and  conveniently, 
the  needed  exchanges  could  be  made  to  the  mutual  advantage  of 
all  the  parties.  If  some  representative  of  values,  and  of  all  values, 
capable  of  fitting  itself  in  amount  to  all  desired  exchanges,  and 
always,  and  for  all  purposes,  commanding  them,  the  legitimate  ends 
of  commerce  would  be  accomplished  by  such  an  instrument,  and  it 
would  be  an  instrument  of  association  as  well  as  of  barter. 

This  predicament  instantly  suggests  the  familiar  medium  which 
we  call  MONEY — money  in  all  the  senses  in  which  the  word  is  em 
ployed — coined  metals;  representative  paper  money;  money  of 
account,  or  credit  money  of  all  kinds,  answering  the  purpose,  and 
each  in  turn  better  than  the  other,  in  circumstances  specially 
adapted  to  its  use. 

The  necessity  of  such  a  representative  of  values  in  the  business 
of  exchange  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  North  American  Indians 
adopted  beads,  made  of  small  and  variously-colored  shells ;  Africans 
and  East  Indians  still  use  shells,  called  cowries ;  the  ancient  Romans 
employed  cattle,  and  bars  of  copper,  and  the  Spartans,  iron.  All 
these  were  money,  as  real  as  the  precious  metals  in  use  elsewhere; 


110  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

for  they  passed  at  their  labor  cost  and  commanded  all  other  com 
modities  in  exchange  in  the  communities  using  them  as  a  circulation. 
They  were  just  as  much  a  measure  of  values,  and  perhaps  not  less 
constant  in  their  own  exchange  value. 

The  necessity  for  some  common  medium  of  exchange  is  obvious. 
That  its  service,  and  its  influence  upon  society  is  not  confined  to  its 
convenience  in  barter  we  shall  see  as  we  advance.  For  the  present 
we  stop  to  consider  the  eminent  fitness  of  the  precious  metals  to 
supply  the  requirements  of  commerce  in  the  range  of  exchanges  to 
which  they  are  adapted. 

1st.  Their  scarcity  and  high  cost  of  production  has  the  effect  of 
compacting  large  value  in  a  small  compass  and  light  weight,  com 
pared  with  other  substances  anywise  adapted  to  such  use.  Precious 
stones  greatly  excel  them  in  these  qualities,  but  in  others  are 
altogether  unfit  for  currency.  Gold  and  silver  have  also  capabili 
ties  of  storage  and  concealment  which  are  great  advantages  added 
to  their  portableness. 

2d.  They  have  a  certain  approach  to  constancy  of  value,  for  their 
cost  of  production  does  not  vary  very  much  during  the  periods  that 
private  contracts  for  payment  usually  run.  In  long  leases,  carrying 
a  money  rent,  and  in  national  funds,  particularly  such  as  the  Eng 
lish  consols,  standing  for  nearly  two  centuries,  the  pound  sterling 
loses  very  largely  its  original  correspondence  to  a  fixed  weight  of 
pure  gold  or  silver;  but  this  objection  is  relieved  by  two  good  con 
siderations  :  the  value  of  all  other  commodities  of  the  market 
diminish  much  more  rapidly;  and,  national  debts  and  long-lease 
rents  and  annuities  have  no  equitable  claim  to  an  invariable  exchange 
value  more  than  other  things.  Society  cannot  be  asked  to  insure  a 
permanency  of  value  for  debts  that  does  not  and  cannot  attach  to 
any  other  property.  As  coin  grows  cheaper  the  burden  of  debt 
grows  lighter,  which  is  so  far  a  remedy  for  the  evil  to  the  debtor, 
and  is  no  injustice  in  the  workings  of  Providence  upon  the  interests 
of  the  creditor,  who,  in  such  case,  and  so  far  as  he  is  a  creditor,  is 
simply  a  sleeping  partner  in  the  world's  business;  and,  as  he  sup 
plies  none  of  its  current  industry,  and  takes  none  of  its  risks,  or  of 
the  risks  of  any  other  form  of  capital  invested,  he  cannot  expect  to 
be  provided  or  cared  for  by  the  system  which  governs  the  business 
of  the  working  generations  of  men.  Moreover,  the  change  in  the 


MONEY  AS    AN    EXCHANGER   OF    VALUES.  Ill 

value  of  any  other  medium  of  payment,  except  land  and  labor,  would 
be  incalculably  greater. 

3d.  The  precious  metals  are,  in  a  certain  sense,  indestructible,  los 
ing  nothing  by  rust  or  other  waste,  except  wear,  from  which  they 
are  sufficiently  well  defended  by  alloys  of  more  durable  metals. 

4th.  Their  divisibility  into  very  small  portions,  and  their  capa 
bility  of  reunion  or  restoration  to  larger  bulks  and  values  without 
loss,  rank  among  the  best  of  their  intrinsic  qualities.  This  point  is 
made  very  clear  when  small  coins  are  withdrawn  from  circulation 
by  a  suspension  of  specie  payments.  The  lack  of  one,  two,  five  and 
ten-cent  pieces  is  a  greater  inconvenience  than  the  absence  of  ten- 
dollar  pieces  or  ten-dollar  notes,  or  any  large  denominations  of  cur 
rent  money.  Bankers'  checks  or  drafts  would  answer  for  the  pay 
ment  of  large  sums,  but  there  is  no  acceptable  substitute  for  small 
money  in  daily  and  hourly  purchases  by  the  great  mass  of  the  people. 

For  a  three-cent  piece  we  obtain  a  required  share  of  the  service 
of  thousands  of  people  who  build,  equip,  and  run  our  railroads,  in 
the  carriage  of  our  letters ;  and  for  a  less  piece  or  sum  we  have  a 
fraction  of  the  labor  of  the  hundreds  that  produce  the  daily  news 
paper — these  infinitesimal  portions  of  the  great  agent,  spread  by 
minute  division  and  "  they  operate  unspent." 

5th.  These  metals  acting  as  money,  may  very  well  be  classed 
among  the  instruments  of  exchange,  with  wagons,  rail-cars,  and 
ships,  for  they  in  effect  transfer  the  property  in  things,  and  thus 
bring  the  things  themselves  to  the  consumer  to  an  extent  that  dis 
penses  with  the  transportation  of  manifold  the  quantity  of  the  things 
which  otherwise  must  be  carried  from  place  to  place.  The  man  who 
has  wheat  to  give  for  iron,  need  not  send  it  to  the  forge  and  bring 
the  iron  back,  he  can  convert  it  into  money  and  buy  his  iron  at  the 
nearest  store ;  and  so  of  a  thousand  other  things,  for  which  the  whole 
circuit  of  travel  and  transportation  would  have  to  be  traversed  for 
the  supply  of  a  hundred  wants  a  day,  but  for  the  service  of  this 
greatest  of  all  exchangers. 

6th.  By  virtue  of  their  intrinsic  value  they  pay,  not  promise  to 
pay,  all  international  balances  of  trade. 

7th.  They  are  capable  of  receiving  and  retaining  such  stamps, 
engravings,  and  impressions  as  readily  and  truly  certify  their  value 
at  sight,  without  chemical  tests  or  incessant  weighing.  Something 
of  their  real  value  is  in  these  qualities,  just  as  paper  in  quires  and 


112  QUESTIONS    OP    THE    DAY. 

reams,  cloth  in  pieces  of  determinate  length,  and  flour  in  barrels  of 
settled  weight,  are  worth  more  than  without  the  forms  of  packages 
and  ascertained  quantities;  provided,  always,  that  governments 
honestly  fix  the  legal  quality  and  quantity  at  their  real  value. 

All  experience  proves  that  no  other  substance,  having  in  itself 
equivalence  of  value,  possesses  at  the  same  time  so  many  qualities 
of  a  good  medium  of  exchange  for  universal  circulation,  as  are 
found  in  gold  and  silver.  It  is  to  be  noted,  however, -that  the 
precious  metals,  in  any  condition,  whether  estimated  by  weight  or 
accepted  at  legal-tender  value,  are  not,  in  a  strict  sense,  either 
a  permanent  standard  or  measure  of  the  value  of  other  things. 
They  are  only  a  conventional  standard  of  payment.  At  fixed  rates 
they  cannot  measure  the  natural  price  of  commodities  whose  labor 
co§t  is  varying  every  day;  and  they  are  not  any  truer  equivalents 
of  long  postponed  payments  of  debt.  Such  standard  or  measure 
they  cannot  be,  so  long  as  their  own  cost  of  production  is  change 
able.  They  have  not  the  measure  permanency  of  the  yard-stick  or 
pound-weight,  which  are  measures  and  standards,  simply  because 
they  do  not  themselves  enter  into  the  act  of  exchange — the  pound- 
weight  does  not  pass  to  the  purchaser  of  the  commodity  which  it 
measures,  but  gold  and  silver  are  the  things  exchanged  for  the 
things  whose  value  they  are  at  the  same  time  used  to  measure.  In 
considerable  periods  of  time  their  value  varies  so  greatly  that  the  re 
duction  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  undertakings  of  accountants  and 
historians.  Writers  usually  put  the  intrinsic  value  of  these  metals, 
as  measured  by  their  purchasing  power,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Eighth  of  England,  or  about  three  centuries  ago  (A.  D.  1509- 
1547)  at  twelve  times  greater  than  now.  But  for  want  of  a  stand 
ard  to  measure  the  intrinsic  value  or  labor  cost  of  the  metals  them 
selves,  there  is  no  proof  of  any  tolerable  exactness  in  the  estimates 
that  are  made,  even  by  the  most  capable  persons,  of  the  change  of 
value  of  an  ounce  of  gold  or  silver  after  the  lapse  of  centuries. 
And,  if  it  is  difficult  for  long  periods,  the  vrate  of  the  process  from 
day  to  day  or  year  to  year  is  no  less  so,  though  of  less  moment. 

The  price  of  horses  in  England  in  the  year  1696  Mr,  Macaulay 
puts  at  fifty  shillings.  The  pound  of  silver  was  at  that  time  coined 
into  sixty-two  shillings,  now  into  sixty-six  shillings,  so  that  fifty 
shillings  then  contained  within  a  fraction  of  as  much  silver  of  the 
same  fineness  as  fifty-three  and  one-quarter  shillings  now,  which 


MONEY  AS  AN  EXCHANGER  OF  VALUES.        113 

gives  us  the  average  price  of  horses  in  England  one  hundred  and 
seventy-four  years  ago  as  the  equivalent  of  $12.92  in  American 
gold  in  1870.  The  horses  of  that  day,  however,  were  not  really 
worth,  and  would  not  be  worth  more  than  half  the  price  of  English 
horses  now,  if  so  much.  This  estimate  would  put  the  comparative 
average  value  of  horses  now  in  England  at  but  little  more  than 
twenty-five  dollars  in  the  money  of  1696. 

If  the  change  be  pursued  still  further  back,  we  find  that  in  the 
year  1066  the  Tower  pound  of  silver  was  coined  into  twenty  shil 
lings^  equal  to  eighteen  and  three-quarter  shillings  of  the  Troy  pound 
adopted  in  1527,  and,  that  thereafter- the  same  quantity,  or  Troy 
pound,  underwent  the  following  striking  changes  :  In  1527,  forty 
shillings;  in  1553,  sixty  shillings;  in  1600,  sixty-two  shillings;  in 
1816,  sixty-six  shillings.  Here  we  have  the  legal  tender  and  ex 
change  value  of  silver  increased  to  more  than  double  in  five  centu 
ries,  and  three  and  a  half  times  in  eight  centuries;  the  real  value, 
or  the  labor  cost  of  production,  declining,  if  not  regularly  through 
the  whole  period,  at  least  very  greatly  in  those  eight  hundred  years, 
and  still  more  and  more  rapidly  within  the  last  twenty  years. 

Going  still  farther  back  into  the  past,  a  still  greater  change  in 
the  money  value  of  silver  may  be  safely  inferred.  The  Disciples 
estimated  the  value  of  bread  that  would  suffice  for  one  meal  for  five 
thousand  hungry  people  in  the  wilderness  of  Judea,  eighteen  hun 
dred  years  ago,  at  two  hundred  pence  (Mark  vi.,  37).  The  Roman 
penny,  then  and  there  in  circulation,  was  equal  in  quantity  of  silver 
to  seven  and  a  half  pence  sterling  now,  or  about  fifteen  cents  of 
American  money.  Two  hundred  pence  were  therefore  equal  to 
thirty  dollars.  This  is  an  allowance  of  just  three-fifths  of  one  cent 
for  the  bread  of  each  person.  It  would  probably  cost  thirty  cents  a 
head  to  supply  such  hungry  men  now.  If  so,  money  has  only  one- 
fiftieth  of  its  purchasing  power  after  the  lapse  of  eighteen  centuries. 
But  there  are  no  means  of  calculating  the  relative  commercial  value 
of  gold  and  silver  at  any  distances  of  time,  either  long  or  short,  be 
cause  in  the  intervals  all  other  values  are  undergoing  changes  which 
are  at  once  fluctuating  and  incapable  of  measure.  The  attempt  is 
like  measuring  a  flying  cloud  on  a  windy  day  with  an  elastic  string; 
yet,  one  can  be  sure  without  such  a  standard,  that  the  day  is  more 
cloudy  than  a  clear  one. 

The  general  fact  is  indisputable  that  silver  and  gold  have  grown 


114  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

several  times  cheaper  intrinsically  than  they  were  before  the  dis 
covery  of  America  by  Columbus  ;  and  it  is  clear  that  they  must  have 
cheapened  materially  since  the  mines  of  California  and  Australia 
were  opened — not  because  of  their  greater  abundance  in  use,  but 
from  the  reduced  labor  cost  of  their  production.  Yet  this  fact  does 
not  even  help  to  determine  their  purchasing  power  now,  as  compared 
with  three  hundred  years  ago ;  because,  in  all  that  period,  land  and 
labor  have  been  enhancing  in  value  faster  as  measured  by  them, 
than  the  metals  have  been  declining  in  cost  of  production;  and 
manufactures  have  been  at  the  same  time  cheapening  certainly  very 
much  faster  than  they  possibly  could,  for  they  are  not  equally  under 
the  power  of  cheapening  processes  of  production  with  the  commodi 
ties  made  of  the  useful  minerals  and  of  the  raw  materials  of  textile 
fabrics. 

As  we  insist  that  what  we  call  the  labor  cost  of  these  metals  settles 
their  commercial' value,  might  an  estimate  be  made  with  approxi 
mate  results  from  such  data  as  the  business  of  production  affords  ? 
Here  again  great  difficulties,  and  equally  great  uncertainties  are  en 
countered.  Gold  and  silver  mining  is  now  marked  by  all  the  char 
acters  of  gambling,  except  its  fraudulent  intention.  It  is  in  the 
main  a  desperate  game.  The  risks  of  loss  and  the  hopes  of  gain 
engender  a  recklessness  that  belongs  not  so  much  to  an  industry  as 
to  a  speculation,  dependent  upon  the  incalculable  changes  of  fortune. 
Success  in  discovery  and  yield  must  compensate  for  the  labor  in 
vain  which  so  often  goes  before,  and  is  always  likely  to  follow.  The 
expense  of  machinery  and  water-supply,  the  varying  cost  of  pro 
visions,  and  the  capriciousness  of  the  workmen  under  the  constant 
seductions  of  better  luck  in  promise,  and  other  influences,  in  char 
acter  with  the  wild  speculative  spirit  of  the  enterprise,  altogether 
put  calculation  at  defiance.  Such  is  the  unsteadiness  of  the  whole 
business  that  no  one  can  calculate  upon  compensation  or  profits 
except  the  brokers  in  the  Pacific  coast  cities  and  metropolitan  money 
markets  of  the  Atlantic  coasts  in  Europe  and  America.  The  labor 
cost  of  this  intractable  subject  is  as  difficult  as  its  exchange  value  in 
the  ever  varying  markets  in  which  it  plays  the  go-between  of  protean- 
priced  commodities. 

There  is  yet  another  way  of  vaguely  estimating  or  imagining  the 
value  of  the  precious  metals.  This  is  by  the  supposed  effect  of 
their  changes  of  quantity  in  use.  This  idea  rests  upon  an  assumed 


MONEY  AS  AN  EXCHANGER  OF  VALUES.         115 

equivalence  of  the  money  in  circulation  to  the  whole  value  of  the 
commodities  in  exchange;  an  assumption  utterly  unwarranted,  as 
we  shall  presently  see.  The  doctrine,  or  notion,  that  an  increase  of 
quantity  must  diminish  value  in  these  metals,  helps  itself  to  some 
thing  mistaken  for  proof,  in  a  supposed  analogy  to  the  workings  of 
paper  money.  It  is  not  questioned  that  paper  money  is  cheapened 
by  its  abundance  and  depreciated  by  its  excess.  But  if  this  were 
so,  and  the  measure  were  accurate,  there  is  this  grand  difference 
between  the  two  currencies:  the  value  of  paper  money  bears  refer 
ence  to  its  redeemability,  or  convertibility  into  coin.  Gold  and 
silver  have  no  such  dependency.  They  are  not  in  the  category  of 
credit.  They  are  not  convertible  or  redeemable  in  any  other  value 
upon  which  their  own  depends.  We  have  had  several  experiences 
of  excess  of  paper  money  in  the  United  States,  and  it  appears  that, 
whenever  its  circulation  exceeded  the  steady-going  amount  as  much 
as  twenty-five  per  cent,  an  explosion  resulted.  Now  we  need  not  say 
that  any  supposable  increase  in  metallic  money  would  not  utterly 
destroy  its  value  as  money,  and  we  may  very  properly  and  perti 
nently  point  to  the  fact  that  the  whole  increase  of  coin  money  be 
tween  the  years  1850  and  1860,  which  could  not  be  less  than 
double  the  amount  in  use  at  the  beginning  of  the  period,  did  not 
put  up  the  aggregate  market  price  of  the  whole  range  of  commodi 
ties  in  our  markets.  On  the  contrary,  the  price  of  thirty  out  of 
sixty  articles  reported  in  New  York,  declined  through  a  range  of 
principal  items  in  the  list,  from  forty-four  to  twelve  per  cent  in  the 
five  years  1855-60,  when  the  gold  influx  was  at  the  highest.  The 
quantity  of  gold  so  greatly  increased,  helped,  besides,  by  an  in 
crease  of  thirty-three  per  cent  of  paper  circulation  in  the  ten  years 
1850-60,  had  not  the  effect  of  depreciating  the  exchange  value  of 
either,  and  especially  of  the  coin  circulation.  Whatever  force  there 
is  in  the  law  of  "  demand  and  supply  "  it  manifestly  had  no  appli 
cation  to  the  money  conditions  of  this  remarkable  period,  which 
can  help  us  to  measure  the  effect  of  quantity  of  money  upon  either 
its  intrinsic  or  exchange  value. 

The  argument,  borrowed  from  the  history  of  paper  money,  we 
must  insist,  has  no  proper  application  to  the  operations  ^>f  a  coin 
circulation  in  the  respect  now  under  consideration.  The  difference 
lies  in  these  particulars :  circulating  notes  have  not  any  intrinsic 
value  (beyond  the  cost  of  their  production,  and  that  only  while 


116  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

they  answer  their  designed  use).  They  are  merely  pledges  of 
credit — the  credit  of  governments,  or  banks,  and  of  the  bor 
rowers  from  them,  and  being,  to  a  very  great  extent,  mere  anticipa 
tions  of  values  not  yet  realized,  the  holders  under  such  uncer 
tainties  of  security,  and  especially  in  periods  of  alarm,  will  push 
off  such  notes  for  anything  better  secured;  they  will  realize  by  in 
vesting  in  property  more  secure,  willingly  paying  the  premium  of 
such  insurance;  that  is,  they  will  give  higher  prices  for  safer 
property,  and  so,  paper  money  depreciates.  Specie  never  depre 
ciates  for  such  cause.  Its  abundance  never  touches  its  solvency, 
and  we  must  look  elsewhere  for  the  fluctuations  in  its  value.  Only 
one  cause  remains,  and  that  has  the  great  strength  in  this  argument 
that  it  is  the  sole  cause  of  value  of  all  industrial  productions  that 
are  exchanged  among  men — the  cost  of  its  production ;  that  is,  of 
its  reproduction  at  the  time  when  its  value  is  the  question.  If  it 
were  as  easily  obtained  as  water,  its  market,  or  exchange  value,  would 
be  only  the  cost  of  transportation  from  the  rivers  to  the  consumer, 
or  the  cost  of  sinking  and  working  the  wells,  and  of  conveyance 
when  it  must  be  found  beneath  the  service.  When  it  is  found  as 
abundant  as  iron,  and  as  easily  produced  in  condition  for  use,  it 
will  be  as  cheap  by  the  ton,  whether  it  be  more  or  less  fit  for  like 
purposes. 

Some  idea  of  the  increase  of  metallic  money  in  circulation  in 
Europe  may  be  had  from  Humboldt's  estimate,  which  is  accepted  by 
experts  as  approximately  correct.  He  puts  it  at  more  than  thirty 
times  the  quantity  in  the  eighteenth  century  over  that  of  the 
fifteenth.  This  period  of  three  hundred  years  covers  the  compara 
tively  vast  addition  derived  from  the  American  mines,  which  fol 
lowed  the  discovery  of  the  New  World.  The  rate  of  increase  upon 
the  previous  supplies  within  the  present  century,  may  be  guessed  at 
by  the  coinage  before  and  since  California  and  Australia  have  been 
opened.  The  British  mint,  in  the  fifteen  years  1816-30,  coined 
gold  and  silver  to  the  value  of  fifty-five  and  three-fourths  millions  of 
pounds  sterling.  In  the  fifteen  years,  1851—65,  to  the  amount  of 
ninety-six  millions  of  pounds.  Taking  later  and  fairer  periods  for 
contrast^ in  the  United  States — the  mint  and  branches  coined  one 
hundred  and  six  and  a  half  millions  of  dollars  in  the  fifteen  years 
1825-49;  and  in  the  fifteen  years  1851-65,  seven  hundred  and 
forty-nine  millions. 


MONEY  AS   AN    EXCHANGER    OF    VALUES.  117 

It  is  known  that  such  multiplication  of  the  amount  in  use  as 
these  figures  show  has  not  yet  depreciated  the  exchange  value  of 
money  made  of  these  metals.  So  we  say  again  that  whatever  force 
the  law  of  supply  and  demand  may  be  allowed,  it  helps  nothing  in 
determining  either  the  intrinsic  value  or  purchasing  power,  or,  so  to 
speak,  the  market  price  of  the  precious  metals  in  use,  as  they  have 
operated  in  past  or  present  times.  Nearly  a  hundred  years  ago, 
when  the  matter  was  as  well  in  view,  and  the  facts  of  experience  as 
strong  to  the  point,  as  now,  Adam  Smith  said  that  the  importation 
of  one  hundred  and  twenty  to  one  hundred  and  forty  millions  of 
francs  per  annum  for  more  than  a  century,  with  all  the  substitutes 
for  metallic  money  added  in  that  time,  had  not  depreciated  the  ex 
change  value  of  the  precious  metals  in  Europe. 

The  source  of  error  in  the  customary  reasoning  on  this  subject 
lies  in  fixing  or  finding  a  standard  of  supply,  and  making  no  allow 
ance  for  the  variance  of  demand  which  such  supply  induces.  Even 
if  the  limit  of  consumption  or  use  were  ascertained,  or  ascertaiuable, 
or  imaginable,  the  application  of  the  law  to  money  would  be  a  mis 
take.  A  community  cannot  consume  more  than  a  certain  quantity 
of  food,  but  who  can  fix  a  limit  for  the  use  or  consumption  of  news 
papers,  furniture,  clothing,  or  of  vehicles  for  travel  and  transporta 
tion  ?  And  how  can  a  gauge  be  invented  for  the  use  of  money  ? 
As  concerns  the  present  and  probable  supply  of  the  precious 
metals,  the  possible  requirement  is  the  subject  of  such  conditions 
as  these  : — 

The  wealth  of  Great  Britain  is  growing  at  the  rate  of  a  thousand 
millions  of  dollars  a  year ;  France  and  the  United  States,  together, 
twice  as  much,  without  embracing  the  rest  of  the  continents  of 
Europe  and  America.  These  three  thousand  millions  of  added  prop 
erty  in  their  markets  can  easily  make  room  for  an  addition  of  two 
or  three  hundred  millions  a  year  without  altering  prices,  or  pro 
ducing  a  relative  depreciation  of  a  farthing  in  the  hundred  pounds 
worth.  Nay,  they  may  employ,  besides,  double  their  ordinary 
amount  of  bank  paper,  keeping  it  sound  the  while,  and  by  adopting 
cash  payments  in  lieu  of  the  usual  run  of  credits  for  sixty,  ninety, 
or  one  hundred  and  twenty  days,  or  for  six  months  or  a  year, 
such  increase  of  circulation  would  be  all  u demanded"  and  the 
medium  would  not  depreciate,  whether  metallic,  or  paper,  or  mixed. 
Furnish  the  money  in  any  increase  of  quantity  that  the  market  will 


118  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

absorb  and,  not  its  value,  but  the  credit  system  among  buyers  and 
sellers  will  be  proportionately  affected. 

But  a  metallic  money  and  its  representative,  convertible  circula 
ting  paper  money,  together  are  not  the  only  mediums  of  payment  in 
use.  There  are  other  agencies  working  in  their  stead,  and  toward 
their  exclusion  from  this  office  and  service,  which  greatly  affects 
their  supply,  and  their  sufficiency  relatively  to  the  requirement  or 
"  demand"  in  the  business  of  exchange.  This  is  money  of  account 
in  ledgers,  checks,  drafts,  bills  of  exchange,  negotiable  notes  of  hand, 
or,  in  whatever  form  private  and  bank  debts  and  claims  are  evi 
denced.  These,  to  a  great  extent  are  settled  without  the  use  of  any 
thing  that  is  called  money  or  circulation.  Clearing  houses  strictly 
so  called,  in  the  principal  cities,  and  banks  of  discount  and  deposit 
everywhere,  perform  this  office — they  settle  debts  and  claims  by  the 
process  that  in  law  is  called  set-off.  During  a  year  ending  in  Octo 
ber,  1869,  the  banks  of  New  York  settled  mutual  claims  of  debtor 
and  creditor,  occurring  among  themselves,  which  amounted  to  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  millions  dollars  per  day ;  the  balances  paid 
on  these  transactions  averaging  about  four  per  cent,  seldom  rising 
to  five  per  cent  of  the  whole  amount  of  the  claims  so  adjusted  by 
set-off.  In  other  words,  they  paid  to  each  other  about  one  hundred 
and  twenty  millions  every  day  without  using  a  dollar  of  money  of 
any  kind,  other  than  this  money  of  account  expressed  in  drafts, 
checks,  and  bills. 

Country  banks  do  exactly  the  same  thing  for  their  customers 
which  the  banks  of  the  cities  do  for  each  other — they  balance  debts 
against  each  other  by  charges  and  credits  on  their  books,  and  to  the 
extent  of  such  balances,  no  money  of  coin  or  bank  notes,  whatever, 
is  paid  by  or  to  any  body.  Wherever  business  is  well  organized 
all  credits  may  be  liquidated  without  the  use  of  more  money  than 
the  profits  of  business  which  may  vary  from  five  to  ten  or  fifteen 
per  cent,  and  for  the  amount  of  such  profits  only  can  any  one  need 
money  of  any  kind  where  any  form  of  the  clearing  house  agency  is 
employed.  Accordingly  currency  is  in  greater  demand,  relatively 
to  the  business  done,  where  no  such  set-off  system  is  available,  and, 
where  it  is  employed  money  is  proportionately  eliminated. 

By  virtue  of  this  agency  of  the  clearing  house  in  England,  the 
necessity  for  money  of  any  kind  is  diminishing  relatively  to  the 
amount  of  business  transacted.  For  example  and  proof:  the  ex- 


MONEY  AS    AN    EXCHANGER   OF    VALUES.  119 

ports  of  British  and  Irish  products,  in  the  year  1840,  were  valued 
at  fifty-one  and  a  half  millions  of  pounds;  the  note  circulation  of  the 
United  Kingdom  in  that  year  was  thirty-six  and  a  half  millions  of 
pounds.  In  1865,  the  like  exports  amounted  to  one  hundred  and 
sixty-six  millions,  and  the  note  circulation  stood  at  thirty-seven  and 
a  half  millions.  Taking  the  exports  of  1865  to  indicate  the  general 
increase  of  business,  and  the  necessarily  equal  increase  of  some  or 
all  the  methods  of  payment,  we  find  this  result :  the  business  of 
the  Kingdom  increased  in  these  fifteen  years  two  hundred  and 
twenty-four  percent;  the  circulation  only  two  and  three-quarters 
per  cent.  Evidently  the  service  of  money  in  exchanging  values,  is 
totally  misunderstood  when  its  quantity  is  supposed  to  be  the  equiva 
lent  of  the  values  exchanged.  People  confuse  themselves  with  the 
fact  that  the  same  piece  of  money  may  be  used  in  a  dozen,  a  hun 
dred,  or  a  thousand  payments  in  the  year.  But  here  the  same,  or 
within  a  fraction  of  the  same  amount  of  money  served  the  business 
of  producing  and  purchasing  more  than  three  times  the  quantity  of 
goods  after  a  lapse  of  twenty-five  years.  Did  it  circulate  more  than 
three  times  faster  ?  The  goods  bought  and  sold  with  money,  change 
ownership,  or  circulate  just  as  often  and  as  fast.  A  dollar's  worth 
of  goods  passes  with  every  dollar  paid  for  them,  and  one  dollar  can 
not  do  the  exchange  work  of  three  in  cash  sales.  But  we  will 
understand  the  subject  more  clearly,  when  we  shall  have  ascertained 
and  considered  those  other  functions  of  money  which  are  not  seen 
in  its  simple  office  of  exchanger  of  commodities  in  market. 


CHAPTER   X. 

MONEY — A   PRODUCER   WHILE   ACTING    AS    AN    EXCHANGER 
OF    VALUES. 

Money — a  producer,  while  acting  as  an  exchanger  of  values  : — How  money  stimu 
lates  production. — It  is  not  dead  capital. — Money  in  civilized  labor — the 
primum  mobile  of  industry. — Production  proportioned  to  capital  employed. — 
Productiveness  not  in  arithmetical,  but  in  geometrical  proportion  to  the  money 
impulse. — Error,  vulgar  and  scientific,  of  the  equivalence  of  value  of  circulating 
money  to  the  things  exchanged  in  commerce. — Hume. — Mill. — Money  the 
pendulum  of  prices,  Mill's  formula,  contradicted  by  obvious  facts. — Not  one 
dollar  of  money  in  any  country  to  sixteen  or  twenty  in  value  of  commercial 
exchanges.  Increase  of  circulation  does  not  pro  tanto  increase  prices. — In 
nothing  else  do  gluts  and  deficiencies  affect  prices  in  simple  arithmetical  pro 
portions. — Prices  of  wheat  in  excess  and  deficiency  of  supply. — Ratio  of  money 
to  prices  in  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  eighteenth  centuries,  by  Arthur  Young. — 
In  the  nineteenth  century  prices  have  fallen  as  money  increased  in  quantity — 
in  England,  sixty  per  cent  in  thirty  years — in  New  Y^ork,  in  a  range  of  from 
forty-four  to  twelve  per  cent  in  five  years,  under  an  increase  of  the  currency  of 
twenty-two  per  cent. — Land  and  Labor  have  risen  by  increase  of  their  intrinsic 
worth. — Prices  of  manufactures  fall — food  remains  stationary,  because  the  vital 
laws  are  less  understood  than  the  mechanical. — Land  and  Labor  rise,  and  their 
products  fall  in  price. — What  is  meant  by  land — what  by  labor. — Without  capi 
tal,  land,  labor,  and  people  worthless. — Sparseness  and  poverty  of  savage  popu 
lations. — Causes  of  Indian  extinction. — Without  property  in  the  land,  no  labor; 
without  labor,  land  worthless. — Nature  subdued  through  her  own  agencies, 
man  and  land  enriched. — Renovation  of  the  earth  conditioned  upon  obedience 
to  the  Creator's  laws. — Money  embodies  all  forms  of  capital,  and  is  efficient  in 
proportion  to  its  amount  and  movement. — It  employs  wasting  labor,  and  raises 
prices  of  commodities  and  wages  to  par,  but  never  higher. — Afterwards  reduces 
prices  by  increased  production. — Par  value  of  money  defined. — The  assump 
tions  of  Mill's  theory  are  impossibilities. — Money  of  account — its  equivalence 
to  values  exchanged  precise,  because  it  is  itself  their  ideal  measure. — Results  of 
the  argument. — The  supply  of  money  and  labor  always  hitherto  short  of  the 
service  required  from  them. — All  increas^of  both  beneficial,  except  in  its  effects 
upon  creditors. — These  effects,  nevertheless,  not  inequitable. — Debt-holders 
have  no  right  to  a  perpetual  release  from  the  labor  of  self-support. — Effect  of 
lessened  cost  of  their  production  upon  the  precious  metals. — Their  use  till  they 
have  performed  their  uses. — How  they  widen  their  sphere  of  use  till  their  service 
is  fulfilled. 
120 


MONEY  AS    A    PRODUCER    OF    VALUES.  121 

'•  Ix  every  Kingdom  into  which  money  begins  to  flow  in  greater 
abundance  than  formerly,"  says  David  Hume,  "  everything  takes  a 
new  face;  labor  and  industry  gain  life;  the  merchant  becomes 
more  enterprising,  the  manufacturer  more  diligent  and  skillful, 
and  the  farmer  follows  the  plough  with  more  alacrity  and  attention." 
This  statement  is  true,  and  the  reasons  for  it  are  especially  worthy 
of  attention.  We  must  understand  why  money  is  such  a  stimulant 
of  industrial  production  and  of  activity  in  trade.  Labor  is  capital, 
unless  the  cause  is  lost  in  the  effect.  Labor  power  is  the  result  of 
the  consumption  of  other  capital  in  the  form  of  food;  clothing,  and 
other  means  of  support  and  development.  But  labor  power,  like 
that  generated  in  steam,  perishes  instantly  upon  coming  into  exist 
ence.  If  not  instantly  employed  it  is  lost.  Money  is  in  the  same 
predicament.  Its  productiveness  is  in  its  activity — it  must  yield 
interest  or  profit,  and  it  must  be  made  to  yield  profit  in  order  to  pay 
interest.  "Time  is  money"  to  money  itself,  as  it  is  to  labor.  It 
solicits  employment,  and  prompts,  while  it  aids,  industry.  It  is  a 
motor  power  to  labor  of  all  kinds;  heads  and  hands,  men  and 
things  are  put  to  use,  that  otherwise  must  remain  idle,  and  while 
idle,  useless  and  wasting,  though  life  and  its  necessities  go  on  with 
their  demands  through  poverty  to  destitution. 

The  conditions  of  human  life  are  such  that  its  indispensable  sup 
plies,  comforts,  and  luxuries  must  be  drawn  by  perpetual  new  crea 
tions  from  the  elements  of  the  earth.  Labor,  in  its  largest  sense, 
is  the  cost  of  these  supplies.  Among  civilized  men  in  advancing 
conditions  these  necessities  are  ever  increasing  in  extent  and  variety. 
Civilization  is  progress,  and  progress  means  growing  control  of 
material  things,  and  this,  again,  means  a  growing  demand  for  them. 
Money  stimulates,  promotes,  and  assists  the  production  that  meets 
the  enlarging  wants,  and  is  far  from  being  passive  in  its  use — a 
sign,  a  counter,  or  a  mere  measure  of  the  values  of  other  things. 

Capital  in  the  form  of  money,  or  credit  representing  money,  is 
the  yoke-fellow,  the  cobperator  of  labor  in  all  production  in  ad 
vancing  stages  and  conditions  of  society.  Men  cannot  work  with 
out  implements ;  they  cannot  work  profitably  or  availably  without 
all  sorts  of  machinery;  and  they  cannot  work  at  all  without  current 
subsistence.  They  cannot  wait  a  day  for  the  conversion  of  their 
special  products  into  the  clothes  they  must  wear,  and  the  food  they 
must  eat.  And  above  all,  they  cannot  wait,  without  loss  and  suf- 
9 


122  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

fering,  for  the  labor  by  which  they  live.  Capital  is  thus  the  prime 
condition  with  labor,  just  as  labor  is  the  first  consideration  with 
capital.  Married  they  are,  for  better  or  worse,  in  mutual  and  equal 
dependence ;  and  on  that  marriage  depends  their  issue  for  its  exist 
ence,  quantity,  and  quality.  A  certain  amount  of  coin  or  credit 
money  is  indispensable  to  adequate  production.  It  may,  indeed, 
be  called  the  primum  mobile — the  first  cause  of  motion  in  all 
civilized  industries ;  for  here,  as  in  the  Ptolemaic  system  of  the 
planetary  circulation,  it  is  the  outermost  revolving  sphere  which 
gives  motion  to  all  the  rest. 

Money  (coin  and  credit)  is  the  power  which  puts  all  the  wheels 
of  the  great  machine  of  business  into  motion,  and,  accordingly, 
their  velocity  and  force  correspond  to  the  force  of  the  propelling 
current,  or  to  the  force  of  the  currency.  Hume  states  the  effect  of 
an  abundance  in  general  terms  sufficiently  descriptive  j  but  it 
should  be  understood  that  the  measure  of  increased  activity  in 
business  is  not  an  arithmetical  ratio,  or  a  dollar's  worth  of  in 
creased  effect  for  every  dollar  added  to  the  sum  of  the  force.  The 
proportion  of  increase  in  the  motor  power  is  not  a  dead  numeral 
multiplier.  It  is  an  impulse  generating  force  by  its  own  action, 
and  producing  a  movement  best  described  as  accelerated  ve 
locity.  To  this  character  or  quality  of  its  law  of  increase  cor 
responds  the  action  of  its  deficiency,  which,  with  constantly  and 
rapidly  growing  effect  at  every  stage,  tends  to  fall  below  the  power 
of  moving  the  machinery  at  all ;  the  stand-still  being  anticipated 
long  before  the  supply  is  totally  expended.  Nothing  is  so  sensitive 
to  prospective  changes  as  money  capital.  The  apprehension  of 
diminished  exchange  value  puts  it  to  unwonted  activity  of  produc 
tive  effort.  It  quickens  its  movement  just  as  its  use  cheapens, 
until  at  last  it  goes  begging  for  work.  On  the  other  hand,  under 
the  prospect  of  a  rise  in  its  exchange  value,  it  tightens  its  out 
goings  ;  its  interest  rises;  debtors,  to  escape  bankruptcy,  and  non- 
capitalists,  who  cannot  afford  to  be  idle,  must  have  it  at  whatever 
sacrifice  they  can  bear;  and  accordingly  its  rate  of  hire,  and  its 
purchasing  power,  rise  relatively  to  all  other  capital,  including 
labor,  in  far  more  than  the  arithmetical  ratio  of  its  own  scarcity. 

This  is  all  so  plain  that  no  argument  is  required  to  establish  its 
abstract  truth ;  but  we  want  the  force  of  this  truth  for  most  im 
portant  and  greatly-needed  uses  in  considering  the  functions  and 


MONEY  AS    A    PRODUCER    OF    VALUES.  123 

influence  of  money  at  large.  Just  here  we  have  to  meet  a  preva 
lent  error  of  the  unskilled,  backed  by  the  authority  of  a  school  of 
economists,  who  hold  the  popular  ear  by  the  easy  terms  of  furnish 
ing  logical  formula)  for  the  verification  of  acceptable  notions. 

Money  is  a  mystery — enough  so  in  itself,  but  all  the  more  that  the 
mystery  is  muddied  with  a  parcel  of  aphorisms  which  are  allowed 
to  obstruct  the  light  that  might  clear  up  some  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  its  true  theory. 

For  instance,  it  is  currently  held  that  the  amount  of  money  in 
circulation  represents  the  value  of  all  property  in  exchange ;  that, 
no  matter  whether  the  quantity  be  great  or  small,  it  is  equally,  and 
in  all  cases,  the  measure  of  prices.  Hume  made  this  mischievous 
blunder  seventy  years  ago,  and  J.  Stuart  Mill  repeats  it  in  the  last 
edition  of  his  "  Political  Economy."  He  says,  "  the  doubling  of  the 
money  in  use  would  do  no  good  to  any  one ;  would  make  no  differ 
ence  except  having  to  reckon  pounds,  shillings  and  pence  in  greater 
numbers.  It  would  be  an  increase  of  values  only  as  estimated  in 
money,  a  thing  only  wanted  to  buy  other  things  with;  and  would 
not  enable  any  one  to  buy  more  of  them  than  before."  And  he  goes 
on  to  say,  "  this  ratio  would  be  precisely  that  in  which  the  quantity 
of  money  had  been  increased.  If  the  whole  money  in  circulation 
was  doubled,  prices  would  be  doubled.  If  it  was  only  increased  one- 
fourth,  prices  would  rise  one-fourth." 

How  like  clock-work  this  thing  is  calculated ;  and  with  what  con 
fidence  the  notion  is  delivered!  Thus,  if  the  pendulum  beats  two 
strokes  for  one  in  the  second,  the  hands  will  traverse  the  dial-plate 
twice  as  often  in  twelve  hours  as  they  do,  but  they  would  measure 
only  the  same  length  of  time.  But,  is  money  the  pendulum  of 
prices,  and  are  its  scarcity  and  its  abundance  measured  by  arith 
metical  multipliers  and  divisors  on  the  price-current  dial-plate  of 
the  market  ?  Or,  is  the  .whole  thing  an  assumption — a  bundle  of 
assumptions,  having  nothing  to  recommend  it  but  the  arithmetical 
symmetry  of  its  dogmatic  statement? 

lu  the  first  place,  the  money  of  no  country  in  the  world  is  either 
equal,  or  bears  any  constant  proportion  to  the  total  values  in  that 
country's  markets.  The  gold,  silver,  and  bank  paper  of  the  United 
States  never,  before  the  great  Rebellion,  reached  beyond  four  hun 
dred  millions  of  dollars.  Nay,  if  the  inactive  specie  be  subtracted, 
three  hundred  millions  was  the  extreme  limit  of  the  money  in  use. 


124  QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY. 

But,  the  annual  products  of  industry  were  at  least  worth  four  thou 
sand  millions,  of  which  if  but  three-fourths  were  bought  and  sold, 
and  another  thousand  millions  worth  of  real  estate  went  into 
market,  and  still  another  thousand  millions  were  paid  for  all  pro 
fessional,  educational,  and  artistic  services,  we  have  five  thousand 
millions  to  be  paid  and  received,  by  means  of  three  hundred  millions, 
Qt  by  one  dollar  of  money  for  every  sixteen  and  two-thirds  of  values 
only  once  exchanged! 

Now;  if  one  to  sixteen  expressed  the  proportion  in  1860,  at  some 
giv«n  day  in  that  year,  would  an  addition  of  a  hundred  millions  of 
currency,  made  the  next  day,  being  one-third  of  the  sum  existing 
the  day  before,  put  up  all  prices  thirty-three  and  one-third  per  cent? 
or,  would  it  certainly  enhance  by  so  much  the  price  of  any  com 
modity  whatever,  by  its  own  proper  operation,  that  is,  by  the  effect 
of  such  addition  ? 

The  radical  error  of  this  doctrine  is  in  the  assumed  fixed  equiva 
lence  of  the  money  in  circulation  to  the  commodities  in  exchange, 
and  it  becomes  ail  the  more  strikingly  palpable  as  it  is  applied  to 
varying  quantities.  There  is  no  such  ratio  of  effect  in  the  excess  or 
deficiency  of  any  other  thing,  as  is  here  assumed  by  the  alleged 
principle,  and  expressed  in  the  detailed  statement.  Grluts  do  not 
proceed  in  cheapening,  nor  deficiencies  in  enhancing,  market  values 
in  arithmetical  proportions.  Ten  per  cent  deficiency  in  wheat  will 
enhance  its  price  thirty  per  cent;  the  supply  being  reduced  to  one- 
half,  the  price  will  go  up  to  a  four  hundred  and  fifty  per  cent  in 
crease.  Mr.  Mill  is  himself  aware  of  this  fact,  and  formally  states 
and  affirms  it  elsewhere.  The  like  variance  of  price  with  difference 
of  supply  happens  when  the  market  is  overstocked — the  decline  in 
price  of  that  which  is  anxiously  seeking  purchasers,  is  not  measured 
evenly  by  the  percentage  of  surplus. 

Tfye  proposition  which  affirms  a  constant  equivalence  of  money 
with  the  market  values  of  other  things,  is  answered  in  its  own  terms, 
thus :  Arthur  Young  estimates  the  increase  of  money  in  the  six 
teenth,  over  the  amount  in  the  fifteenth  century,  at  two  hundred  and 
eighty-two  per  cent,  and  of  general  prices  in  the  same  time  at  forty- 
two  per  cent;  in  the  seventeenth  century  at  seven  hundred  and 
« seventy-five  per  cent  of  money,  and  ninety-six  per  cent  of  prices; 
and  in  the  eighteenth  over  the  fifteenth  century  at  one  thousand 
and  nineteen  per  cent  of  money  to  one  hundred  and  ninety-two 


MONEY  AS  A  PRODUCER  OF  VALUES.          125 

per  cent  of  prices.  Here  we  have  money  increased  fa'ster  than  prices 
rose  six  and  three-quarters  times  in  the  sixteenth,  eight  times  in  the 
seventeenth,  and  five  and  one-third  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

Since  the  epoch  of  modern  improvement  in  industrial  production 
we  find  that  prices  fall,  and  fall  immensely  in  the  face  of  a  vast  in 
crease  of  the  money  supply,  just  as  on  our  theory  they  should  fall  in 
inverse  proportion  to  the  force  of  the  great  agent  affecting  them. 
Take,  for  example,  the  thirty  years  between  1817  and  1848  :  in 
this  time  England  retained  for  use  an  average  of  ten  millions  of 
dollars  per  annum  of  the  precious  metals  which  she  imported ;  in  the 
whole  period,  adding  three  hundred  millions  to  her  stock.  Did 
prices  go  up  in  proportion?  Were  her  traders  put  to  counting 
pounds,  shillings,  and  pence  in  greater  numbers  for  the  same  quantity 
of  goods  ?  On  the  contrary,  the  prices  of  all  the  multiform  products 
that  enter  into  the  British  exports  fell  sixty  per  cent,  fell  from  a 
dollar  to  two-fifths  of  the  dollar  !  In  the  presence  of  this  three  hun 
dred  millions  of  increase  in  the  precious  metals,  the  exports,  which 
at  the  prices  of  1817  would  have  cost  three  thousand  two  hundred 
millions,  were  valued  at  only  one  thousand  two  hundred  and  eighty 
millions  in  1848. 

The  notion  tried  again  at  a  later  period  and  nearer  home — in  the 
United  States :  the  bank  notes  in  circulation  and  the  bank  deposits, 
which  also  perform  the  functions  of  credit  money,  together  amounted 
to  three  hundred  and  seventy-seven  millions  of  dollars  in  the  year 
1855,  and  in  1860  they  had  risen  to  four  hundred  and  sixty  millions 
— twenty-two  per  cent.  Were  market  prices  twenty-two  per  cent 
higher  on  this  account  ?  As  before  stated,  thirty  of  the  sixty  prin 
cipal  articles  on  the  price-lists  of  New  York  had  in  those  five  years 
actually  fallen  some  forty-four  per  cent,  others  twelve  per  cent,  and 
others  more  or  less  between  these  rates.  Ou  the  other  articles,  the 
changes  were  too  slight  to  have  any  bearing  upon  the  point  at  issue, 
and  they  were,  besides,  generally  such  articles  of  foreign  supply  as 
would  be  affected  by  many  other  causes. 

The  history  of  prices  in  England  of  manufactured  goods  such  as 
she  exports,  under  the  influence  of  a  doubled  quantity  of  gold  and 
silver  in  the  country  ought  of  itself  to  be  conclusive. 

With  respect  to  labor,  it  is  admitted  that  its  wages  rise  as  money 
increases;  not,  however,  because  more  pieces  of  an  aggregate  equal 

trol    1/1    n        c-t   \  a.    nr\ftr\¥(\f\     no    tV>  n  or  111          Iff-  1  n  f    r\F   mr\v\r 


126  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

but  because  tlfe  money  added  to  the  employing  capital  increases  the 
productiveness,  and  with  it  the,  rewards  of  the  laborer.  In  the  like 
circumstances,  land  also  appreciates,  but  not  more  than  the  real  in 
crease  of  its  productiveness  made  by  the  industry  of  the  period — 
by  improvement  in  cultivation  and  convenience  of  market;  both 
being  effected  by  the  employment  of  increased  capital  and  labor. 
The  general  statement  is,  that,  under  an  influx  of  money,  the  prices 
of  all  the  commodities  commonly  called  manufactures  fall  rapidly 
and  greatly.  Food  remains  nearly  stationary,  with  a  natural  tendency 
to  fall  in  price,  but  is  subject  to  a  slower  and  less  certain  reduction, 
for  the  reason  that  its  production  depends  upon  the  laws  of  vegetable 
physiology  in  which  but  little  advance  of  knowledge  is  yet  made ; 
while  those  laws  which  are  concerned  in  the  arts  of  conversion, 
generally  having  dead  matter  for  their  subjects,  are  more  and  more 
mastered  day  by  day;  leaving  land  and  wages  as  the  only  things 
that  naturally  enhance  in  value  under  the  stimulus  of  capital  applied 
in  their  employment  and  development. 

Have  we  fallen  upon  a  paradox  "here  ?  Meaning,  by  a  paradox,  a 
proposition  seemingly  absurd  or  self-contradictory,  but  true  in  fact. 
Probably.  And  this  apprehension  warrants  an  attempt  at  a  fuller 
exposition  of  the  principles  and  facts  intolved.  We  take  the  ground 
that  land  and  labor,  and  only  land  and  labor,  can  and  must  enhance 
in  value  under  the  appliances  of  capital  in  their  employment,  and, 
that  their  products,  in  forms  of  use,  must  as  continually  decline  in 
value.  Baldly  stated  :  land  increasing  in  value  lowers  the  cost  of 
its  products;  wages  growing  in  cost,  their  products  decline  in  price; 
always  supposing  that  both  the  one  and  the  other  are  intrinsically 
improved  by  the  aid  of  capital.  By  land,  we  mean  all  primitive  sub 
stances  belonging  to  the  material  globe — timber,  water,  soil,  minerals, 
and  the  like,  with  all  their  spontaneous  products;  by  labor,  the 
muscular  power  of  man,  the  intelligence  which  directs  it,  and  the 
moral  qualities  which  contribute  to  its  efficiency. 

Now  let  us  see  how  the  argument  runs : 

The  gold  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  was  as  useless  as  their  iron 
ores  or  their  fossil  coal,  or  the  latent  electricity  of  the  earth  and  air 
to  the  savage  Indians;  and  the  Indians  were  as  worthless  to  the 
world  and  to  themselves,  just  because  their  land  was  as  nearly  good 
for  nothing  as  they  were.  Land  and  labor  are  bound  together  for 
good  or  ill.  The  soil,  indeed,  gave  them  a  little  maize,  the  waters 


MONEY  AS  A  PRODUCER  OF  VALUES.  127 

a  few  fishes,  and  the  forests  fire-wood,  wild  fruits,  and  game  ;  but  the 
brute  elements  and  spontaneous  food  starvingly  maintained  a  declin 
ing  human  stock,  tending  constantly  to  extinction.  The  richer 
soils  of  the  Mississippi  valley  and  of  the  Atlantic  slope  did  scarcely 
better  for  them.  In  all  that  region  which  now  supports  eight  mil 
lions  of  people,  reaching  from  Connecticut  to  Lake  Erie,  and  from 
the  chain  of  the  Lakes  to  the  Potomac  river,  Colonel  Parker,  the 
best  authority  we  have  on  the  subject,  says,  there  were  not  more 
than  twenty-five  thousand  Indians  when  Columbus  discovered  the 
Continent.  The  maize  culture  was  deficient  •  the  wild  herds  failed 
them;  they  had  no  commerce,  either  in  furs  or  manufactures;  and 
famines,  diseases,  and  the  wars  of  hungry  rapacity  were  rapidly 
destroying  them.  Earth  and  man  worthless  to  each  other;  poverty, 
sterility,  despair  and  death,  described  them  both.  Making  no  ac 
cumulations  of  the  means  of  subsistence,  they  had  no  capital. 
Having  no  capital,  they  had  not  the  indispensable  agent  for  the  sub 
jugation  of  nature's  forces  to  their  service. 

'In  this  state  of  things  there  was  nothing  in  land  worth  claiming 
in  individual  ownership,  except  for  temporary  occupation,  and  the 
fee  simple  of  the  territories  was  not  worth  more  to  the  tribes  collect 
ively  than  the  powder,  blankets,  and  glass  beads  for  which  they 
sold  it;  nor  was  the  whisky,  which  acted  so  largely  in  the  extinc 
tion  of  their  title,  much  more  insalubrious  than  the  untamed  forces 
of  nature  to  which  they  were  exposed. 

But  change  the  scene — the  coal  becomes  fuel,  the  fuel  becomes 
power.  A  ton  of  it  does  the  work  of  fifteen  hundred  men  for  one 
day;  three  hundred  tons  are  equal  to  their  work  for  a  year.  The 
capable  soil,  the  power  of  the  running  streams,  the  mines,  with  all 
else  which  the  earth  holds  for  human  use  are  all  utilized,  and  the 
desert  becomes  the  property  and  the  home  of  millions  of  men.  The 
thorns  and  thistles  of  the  primal  curse  are  displaced,  and  the  soil, 
baptized  in  the  sweat  of  the  face  of  labor,  brings  forth  bread  in 
abundance,  and,  behold,  it  is  once  more  "  very  good,"  even  as  when 
the  approving  smile  fell  upon  the  first  garden.  The  recreated  in 
its  degree,  approaches  the  new  created  earth.  The  original  con 
ditions  of  human  sovereignty  are  observed ;  the  command  is  ful 
filled — "  Be  fruitful,  and  multiply,  and  replenish  the  earth,  and 
subdue  it."  How  striking  the  mutuality  subsisting  between  laud 
and  labor,  with  this  appropriate  advantage  that  the  human  agent  is 


128  QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY. 

much  more  improved  than  the  material  things  joined  with,  and  sub 
ject  to  his  advancement.  The  earth  has  physical  and  vital  proper 
ties  for  his  service;  man  has  these  and  moral,  intellectual,  and 
religious  endowments,  besides,  to  spread  a  world-wfde  distance  be 
tween  his  savage  state  and  his  highest  possible  earthly  development. 
All  that  there  is  great  and  happy  in  his  destiny  is  conditioned 
strictly  upon  the  application  of  his  powers  to  the  capabilities  of 
nature,  and  is  achieved  in  proportion  to  the  agencies  employed. 
These  agencies  are  all  comprehended  in  the  signification  of  the  word 
capital.  Money  represents  them  all,  and  its  efficiency  is  in  the 
measure  of  its  amount  and  activity. 

Is  there  a  man  in  the  nation  idle — idle  for  want  of  capital  to 
employ  him  ?  Are  there  a  million  of  men  and  women  thus  unoc 
cupied  ?  Is  half  the  available  time  of  all,  in  the  average,  thus 
wasted  ?  Why  ?  Do  they  answer  as  they  stand  in  the  labor 
market,  "Xo  man  hath  hired  us?"  Then  double  the  capital;  put 
them  all  to  work ;  and  will  a  dollar  of  the  required  increase  of 
capital  then  be  acting  only  in  reduction  of  exchange  values? 
No;  under  the  quickening  touch  of  invigorated  industry,  rendering 
the  whole  people  able  to  obtain  and  consume  the  added  products, 
instead  of  starving  and  economizing,  prices  will  not  rise  further 
than  to  restore  from  depression  the  natural  values  of  labor  and 
commodities.  The  first  effect  will  be  that  the  minerals,  which 
before  lay  idle,  will  come  into  market;  the  commodities,  that  gorged 
the  markets  before,  will  find  purchasers,  and  all  prices  will  rise 
to  the  level  of  general  prosperity,  until  cheapened  processes  of  pro 
duction  and  conversion  shall  reduce  them,  but  without  abating  the 
remuneration  of  either  capital  or  labor,  now  made  capable  of  larger 
results  by  the  employment  of  the  same  forces  through  better  means 
and  instruments. 

Money  coming  into  larger  and  more  active  service,  and  setting 
idle  hands  and  minds  to  work,  by  finding  employment  for  all,  will 
give  wages  to  the  unemployed,  and  raise  the  wages  of  those  who 
have  been  underbidding  each  other  for  work,  and  so,  will  raise  the 
labor  cost  of  industrial  products  and  their  raw  materials  to  living 
prices — to  par.  In  its  scarcity  money  was  at  a  premium  and  man 
and  property  at  a  proportionate  discount.  An  adequate  supply 
gives  a  resumption  of  values.  Money  has  not  depreciated,  but 
returned  to  its  normal  value,  by  regaining  its  proper  producing 


MONEY  AS    A    PRODUCER    OF    VALUES.  129 

operation ;  its  par  value  being  determined  by  its  ability  to  put  all 
hands  to  work  and  fairly  reward  them  for  it. 

If  metallic  money  were  nothing  else  than  a  medium  of  exchange, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  only  medium  of  exchange,  or,  in  the 
language  of  Mr.  Mill,  "a  thing  only  wanted  to  buy  other  things 
with,"  and  if,  as  he  holds,  it  had  such  elasticity  of  exchange  value 
as  to  be  always  equal  to  all  varieties  of  quantity  of  other  things,  it 
must,  of  necessity,  rise  and  fall  in  value  in  the  ratio  of  its  supply 
relatively  to  the  property  exchanged  by  it;  and  the  same  thing 
would  be  true  of  its  convertible  representatives.  Its  scarcity  and 
its  abundance  would  then  work  like  an  elastic  measure,  and  be 
always  equal  to  all  quantities  of  things  exchanged  by  it.  These 
ifs,  however,  cover  just  as  many  absurdities  and  sheer  impossi 
bilities. 

Even  confined  to  its  office  as  an  exchanger  of  values,  it  is  not 
the  only  medium  in  use ;  and  so  far  as  it  does  serve  in  this  oifice,  it 
also  acts  at  the  same  time  as  a  producer  of  the  values  to  be  ex 
changed,  thereby  furnishing  the  increase  of  subjects  upon  which 
it  is  to  operate  as  an  exchanger  in  the  market,  and  thus  maintaining 
its  own  equiponderance. 

There  is  one  sort  of  money — the  money  of  account — that,  ex 
pressed  in  the  ledgers  of  traders,  which  has  an  exact  equivalence 
to  the  total  value  of  the  commodities  which  they  deal  in.  Such 
equivalence  it  has  because  it  is  an  ideal  money  only,  and 
not  in  itself  a  valuable  thing  or  substance.  When  such  ac 
counts  are  settled  by  set-off,  the  exchanges  are  effected  by  simple 
indirect  barter,  in  which  circulating  money  has  no  place,  and  the 
nominal  values  are  wholly  indifferent  to  the  question  in  hand.  But 
money  having  the  value  of  its  labor  cost  in  itself,  or  in  the  thing 
which  it  represents,  is  subject  to  the  general  law  of  value,  which  is 
the  cost  of  reproduction,  and  has  no  other  equivalence  than  its 
comparative  labor  cost;  in  other  words,  it  is  no  more,  nor  other 
wise,  the  equivalent  of  marketed  goods  and  things  than  wheat  or 
iron  is. 

It  results  from  the  examination  of  the  whole  subject  that  only 
ideal  money,  such  as  the  money  of  account,  employed  in  indirect 
barter  by  set-off,  is  the  sliding-scale  equivalent  in  exchanges ;  and 
that  all  other  money,  having  in  itself  intrinsically  or  representa 
tively,  a  value  of  its  own,  and  having,  besides,  the  functions  of 


130  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

capital  in  production,  is  not  a  simple  exchanger,  even  when  acting 
in  this  one  of  its  offices,  and  for  these  reasons,  is  subject  to  varying 
price  in  exchange  only  as  all  other  commodities  are. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  considering  money  as  it  is  and  has  been. 
A  history  marked  by  this  conspicuous  fact — there  never  yet  has 
been  enough  of  it.  Let  this  fact  have  its  due  force.  Its  assigned 
office  is  to  put  the  whole  world  of  men  to  work  upon  the  whole  world 
of  matter.  This  it  has  by  virtue  of  its  universal  acceptance  as  the 
representative  of  all  accumulations  of  wealth,  which  accumulations 
are  the  instruments  and  agents  of  all  civilized  industry.  In  the 
hitherto,  and  present  state  of  human  industry,  neither  labor  nor 
capital  have  even  tolerably  approached  the  full  performance  of  their 
duties — each  defective,  in  lack  of  the  aid  of  the  other.  Insufficiency 
and  inefficiency  of  labor  argues  insufficiency  and  inefficiency  of 
money.  Therefore,  no  casual,  or  fluctuating,  or  steady  increase  in  the 
whole  of  the  medium  ever  could  hitherto  have  had  the  character  or 
force  of  an  excess,  or  overplus  supply. 

The  growing  quantity  has  never  done  anything  but  good,  tending 
always  towards  better  and  better  service  to  the  world.  An  excep 
tion — the  only  one — might  be  taken  to  its  effects  upon  the  contract 
value  of  debts,  to  which  it  is  a  sufficient  answer,  that  in  this,  like 
all  other  valuable  things,  the  precious  metals  follow  the  law  of  labor 
value.  The  original  creditor  gave  something — services  or  goods,  or 
lands,  in  exchange  for  the  obligation.  If  he  had  kept  these  proper 
ties  till  the  maturity  of  the  debt,  they  would  have  been  worth  no 
more  than  the  like  things  produced  at  the  time,  and  he  must  take 
just  the  quantity  of  gold  or  silver  that  he  bargained  for,  though  at 
the  end  of  the  term  it  is  produced  at  half,  or  any  less,  labor  cost, 
and  will  command  only  the  same  or  some  other  proportion  of  prop 
erty  and  service.  Moreover,  it  is  well  that  the  burden  of  old 
debts — annuities  and  national  debts — lose  much  of  their  burden  in 
the  progress  of  Imman  affairs.  If  it  were  not  so,  the  coming  gener 
ations  would  be  wofully  oppressed  by  the  debts  of  the  present  and 
past.  The  interest  of  some  of  these  debts  has  already  supported 
several  successive  lives,  and  no  harm  will  be  done  in  equity  if  their 
successors  shall  have  to  do  something  for  their  own  support.  All 
things  else  "perish  with  the  using;"  why  should  debts  remain  in 
tact  perpetually? 

But  the  supply  of  the  precious  metals  has  always  heretofore  been 


MONEY  AS    A    PRODUCER    OF    VALUES.  131 

below  the  requirement,  because  of  the  difficulty  of  their  production, 
or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  their  scarcity ;  and  this  has  been  the 
cause  of  their  high  value  in  exchange,  as  it  must  necessarily  be.  If 
ever  they  shall  become  as  plenty  as  iron,  will  they  not  be  as  cheap, 
and  thereby  be  depreciated  in  value  till  they  exchange  by  the  ton 
instead  of  by  the  ounce  troy,  as  now  ?  We  answer,  that  their  labor 
cost  will  always  be  their  standard  of  exchange  value,  and  when  they 
lose  their  convenience  as  a  medium  of  payment,  they  will  cease  to  be 
so  used,  and  then  there  will  be  no  question  of  the  effect  of  their 
abundance  upon  the  value  of  other  things. 

But  they  will  never  be  produced  in  excess  of  the  demand  for 
such  uses  as  they  can  serve;  for  beyond  the  point  of  paying,  as  well 
as  other  things,  for  the  labor  employed  in  their  production,  it  must 
cease ;  and  in  the  mean  time,  while  advancing  toward  such  point, 
they  will  be  more  and  more  dispensed  with,  by  the  growing  use  of 
those  other  kinds  of  money,  which  are  already  carrying  the  world 
of  business  towards  the  type  form  of  exchange,  simple  barter,  by 
the  intervention  of  credit  money,  which  is  so  much  better,  cheaper, 
and  more  convenient  than  gold  and  silver.  Except  in  international 
dealings,  and  the  small  change  of  daily  expenses,  these  are  now  but 
little  used,  and  are  destined  to  a  continual  process  of  elimination,  as 
business  is  better  and  better  organized. 

Until  metallic  money  and  its  convertible  representatives  shall 
have  reached  the  point  of  increasing  by  their  active  agency  the 
production  of  commodities  to  their  utmost  amount  and  utility,  they 
cannot  decline  in  permanent  value,  so  as  to  require  the  counting  of 
more  pieces  in  payment  for  the  same  thing  in  market,  for  they  are 
found  to  cheapen  such  products  much  more  rapidly  than  their  own 
value  declines  by  added  quantity.  They  of  course  will  not  be 
multiplied  in  the  payment  of  debts;  for  the  debt-dollar  stands 
unchanged  through  all  changes  in  other  things ;  and  nothing 
remains  to  take  the  effect  threatened  by  the  theorists  of  equiva 
lence,  but  land  and  labor.  These,  indeed,  will  require  larger  amounts 
as  they  improve ;  not  because  money  is  cheapened,  however,  but 
because  they  have  become  worth  more  of  it  than  they  were  while 
it  was  scarce,  or  comparatively  scarce,  and  was  therefore  less  effi 
cient  for  their  advancement  to  a  higher  real  value. 

The  necessary  action  of  its  growing  quantity  is  the  opening  of 
new  industries,  and  improvement  of  the  old.  While  there  remains 


132  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

a  useful  substance  in  the  earth,  or  sea,  or  air,  not  utilized  to  its 
highest  worth — while  an  improved  apparatus  of  production  is  still 
wanting — while  a  brain  requiring  the  means  of  sustenance,  and  the 
command  of  opportunity,  and  of  implements,  has  yet  a  latent 
thought  capable  of  human  service — capital  in  the  form  of  money 
will  have  ample  scope  and  verge  enough  to  spread  without  weaken 
ing  its  value.  It  will  go  on  constantly  cheapening  the  ultimate 
products,  but  its  own  accretions  will  all  be  demanded  in  calling  into- 
existence  additional  values,  greater  quantities,  and  better  qualities; 
and  this  work  will  absorb  it  all  without  a  depreciating  remainder 
of  supply. 

What  remains  to  be  said  on  this  subject  will  be  considered  in 
the  chapter  upon  banks  of  discount,  deposit,  and  issue. 


CHAPTER    XI. 

PAPER  MONEY;  AND,  INCIDENTALLY,  OF  BANKS  OF  DEPOSIT, 
DISCOUNT,  AND  ISSUE. 

Bank  paper,  not  banks,  the  subject:  Banking,  an  instance  of  cooperation. — 
Money  an  exchanger  and  producer  of  values. — Exclusive  metallic  money  and 
barter. — Hoarding. — Depositing  at  interest  in  early  times. — English  bankers 
of  the  seventeenth  century. — Negotiable  certificates  of  deposit,  their  service. — 
Convenience  of  metallic  money  increased  in  its  substitute*. — Basis  required 
for  representative  money. — Limited  analogy  of  the  circulating  medium  to  the 
circulation  of  the  blood. — Figures  of  speech  need  watching. — Plethora  of 
money,  a  mischievous  phrase. — No  measurable  ratio  between  quantity  and 
rapidity  of  money  circulation  and  their  effects  upon  business. — Exchange  value 
of  money,  the  cost  of  its  production,  or  of  the  things  it  represents,  not 
affected  by  its  quantity. — How  deposit  bankers  affect  the  money  supply  aud  its 
service. — Bank  of  Amsterdam  in  the  seventeenth  century. — Banks  of  Genoa 
and  Venice  in  the  twelfth  century. — Difference  of  effects  between  the  transfer  of 
money  and  of  the  property  in  it.  —Representatives  of  money  begin  in  deposits, 
and  depend  upon  them;  credit  system  arises. — Miracle  power  of  faith  in  com 
merce. — Multiplying  power  of  credit. — Faith-force  over  and  above  fact-force. — 
Brotherhood  in  business  affairs  corresponds  to  brotherhood  in  spiritual  things. — 
Deposit  banks,  sources  of  profit  and  creators  of  credit. — Instances  in  illustra 
tion. — Concentration  of  capital  brings  credit  with  it. — Elements  of  the  banking 
business. — General  Benefits. — Credit  makes  capital  of  character. — Abuses  of 
the  credit  system. — Evil  is  inverted  good. — Civilization  and  liberty  rest  upon 
credit. — Bank  notes,  their  convenience  greater  than  that  of  checks  and  drafts. — 
Special  adaptation  to  ordinary  uses. — The  money  of  the  common  people. — The 
bank  note  as  a  traveler. — Circulating  notes  issued  by  the  United  States  Govern 
ment — their  amount  in  1864  aud  1871. — Irredeemable  currency — six  hundred 
and  ninety  millions  in  1870,  against  two  hundred  and  fourteen  millions  in 
1857. — Extent  of  depreciation. — The  w»rk  done  by  this  currency. — Prosperity 
under  its  use. — Paper  money  the  resort  of  nations  in  theiikdays  of  trial. — More 
loyal  and  cheaper  in  its  service  than  funded  debts. — Service  of  deposit  banks. — 
Exemption  from  runs. — Safe  proportion  of  loans  and  circulation  to  amount  of 
capital  aud  deposits. — Profits  upon  bank  capital. — Average  of  twenty-eight 
city  banks. — Banks  enhance  the  service  of  money  three  and  a  half  times. — 
Development  of  the  banking  system  in  serial  order. — Benefit,  risks,  and  neces 
sity  of  banks. — Credit  system  indispensable — to  be  amended,  but  not  re 
stricted. — English  system  unimproved  in  the  last  two  centuries. — Balance  of 
good  and  evil  in  favor  of  banks. — Distribution  of  banks. — In  Scotland- 

133 


134  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

average  area  of  her  bank  districts — in  the  United  States. — Excellence  of  the 
Scottish  system — its  popularity. — Popularity  of  the  greenback  currency. — 
Governments  cannot  administer  a  general  banking  system. — United  States 
National  Banking  system  requires  amendment. — Banking  should  be  as  free  as 
any  other  business. — Convertibility,  exclusively  aimed  at,  hinders  reform. — 
Failure  of  Bank  of  England  charter. — Safety,  not  convertibility,  the  essence  of 
the  bank  note. — Inconvertible  paper  better  tha#  a  deficient  sound  currency. — 
Loss  by  discount  as  nothiug  to  an  arrest  of  industry. — The  mystery  of  money, 
no  mystery  to  currency  cobblers. 

IT  must  be  understood  that  we  have  no  room  here,  and  no  use 
for  an  exhaustive  treatise  upon  banks  and  banking.  "We  are  occu 
pied  with  money  and  its  functions ;  and  banking  systems  are  but 
little  more  concerned  in  our  investigations  concerning  bank  paper 
money,  than  gold  and  silver  mines,  their  geology  and  practical 
history,  are  involved  in  discussing  their  products,  which  are  em 
ployed  as  a  medium  of  exchange. 

The  pivot  point  of  our  inquiry  is  the  service  of  coins  and  cir 
culating  notes  in  the  world's  business.  This  must  be  kept  steadily 
in  view  in  order  to  avoid  distraction  and  confusion  of  thought; 
just  as  it  is  necessary  to  keep  the  eye  fixed  upon  some  stationary 
point,  lest  the  head  grow  giddy,  when  all  around  is  reeling  in 
counter  currents  of  shore  and  stream,  as  one  crosses  a  rapid  river. 
The  policy  of  banking  systems  as  one  of  the  cooperation  move 
ments  by  which  associations  of  capitalists  combine  and  enhance 
their  force  in  commerce  is,  however,  so  immediately  in  our  track  of 
thought,  and  so  pertinent  to  the  general  issue  of  our  work,  that 
even  here  some  of  the  plainer  and  more  important  features  of  the 
subject  will  be  in  place,  though  the  treatment  be  an  anticipation 
of  the  orderly  consideration  of  the  associative  movements,  growing 
more  and  more  conspicuous  and  efficient  with  all  progress  in 
civilization. 

Asking  the  reader  to  carry  with  him  all  the  while,  the  steadying 
idea  that  money  is  at  once  the  agent  in  universal  use  for  effecting 
exchanges  of  services  and  of  commodities,  by  which  the  results  of  all 
labor  are  distributed  among  men  in  fitting  quantity  and  kind,  ac 
cording  to  their  several  necessities,  and  at  the  same  time,  that  it  acts 
as  exchanger,  is  also  the  agent  of  capital  of  every  kind  in  its  office 
of  producer  of  all  commodities  in  civilized  life — we  may  proceed  to 
consider  the  means  by  which  it  is  supplied  for  use,  and  by  which  its 
circulation  is  promoted. 


CREDIT    MONEY.  135 

Assuming  a  state  of  society  in  which  coins  of  the  precious  metals 
alone  are  in  use,  as  representatives  of  exchange  values,  and  at  the 
same  time,  assuming  that  they  are  employed  only  as  other  commodi 
ties  are,  iu  simple  barter,  such  coins  passing  at  every  purchase  and 
payment  in  business  transactions,  it  will  be  immediately  perceived 
that  we  are  involved  in  a  condition  of  barbarism  of  a  low  stage — 
barbarism  bordering  upon  savagism  so  closely  as  scarcely  to  be  dis 
tinguished  from  it.  In  such  a  condition  of  things  money  must  be 
idle  in  the  hands  of  the  owners  during  all  the  intervals  between 
sales  and  purchases.  It  is  for  such  periods  hoarded  and  useless,  and 
so  would  indeed  be,  what  Adam  Smith  calls,  dead-stock,  or  rather 
stock  in  a  state  of  suspended  animation.  But  the  holders  naturally 
desire  to  have  it  at  once  active  in  their  service  and  safely  at  their 
command,  and  for  this  purpose,  a  depository  must  be  found  in  which 
it  will  yield  some  profit  to  the  depositor,  either  directly,  in  the 
shape  of  interest,  or  indirectly,  in  the  common  benefit  of  the  whole 
community.  Accordingly  we  find  a  bank  in  which  money  could  be 
deposited,  so  that  the  owner  after  an  interval  might  require  "  his 
own  with  usury"  mentioned  as  a  well  known  "existing  institution  as 
early  as  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  (Luke  xix.,  23).  In 
deed,  scarcely  the  earliest  organization  of  commerce  and  industry 
can  be  conceived  of  as  possible,  without  a  money  exchange  or 
market,  corresponding  and  proportioned  to  the  coexisting  com 
modity-exchange  or  market,  which  business  of  any  sort  implies  and 
necessitates.  The  earlier  communities  had  not  the  institutions 
which  ice  call  banks;  but  they  had,  as  they  must  needs  have  had,  in 
their  place  individual  bankers,  answering  in  a  degree  the  same  re 
quirements.  According  to  Mr.  Macaulay,  so  lately  as  the  date  of  the 
restoration  (A.D.  1661),  the  goldsmiths  of  London  kept  the  cash  of 
the  commercial  houses,  paid  their  drafts,  and  loaned  balances  in 
hand,  paying  themselves  for  trouble  and  risk  out  of  the  interest  of 
such  surplus  as  experience  showed  might  be  loaned  consistently  with 
the  solvency  of  the  bankers. 

The  goldsmith's  note  or  certificate  of  deposit,  says  Macaulay, 
might  be  transferred  ten  times  in  a  morning,  and  thus  a  hundred 
guineas,  locked  in  his  safe,  did  what  would  formerly  have  required 
a  thousand  guineas,  dispersed  through  many  tills.  Adam  Smith 
makes  a  similar  estimate  and  statement  of  the  advantage  derived 
from  the  note  of  the  deposit  banker,  as  he  states  it,  the  substitution 


136  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

of  paper  is  an  operation  by  which  £20,000  in  gold  and  silver,  perform 
all  the  service  which  £100,000  could  otherwise  have  performed.  It 
concerns  us,  however,  to  observe  that  the  operation  of  representative 
paper  does  not  actually  increase  the  fund  on  which  it  is  based  just 
as  many  times  as  the  paper  is  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  The  whole 
effect  is  no  other  than  the  substitution  of  a  cheap  and  convenient 
medium  for  an  expensive  and  comparatively  very  inconvenient  one, 
with  the  great  but  not  easily  computed  benefit  of  the  increased 
rapidity  of  transfer,  and  the  service  rendered  to  so  many  more  re 
ceivers  in  the  same  time.  The  fund  itself  is  not  affected  by  the  rate 
of  its  circulation.  A  thousand  pounds  in  either  coin  or  paper  is  not 
a  thing  so  changeable  in  value,  so  nominal,  so  unreal,  that  it  can  be 
increased  or  diminished  at  will  by  any  of  the  incidents  of  its  use.  If 
it  were  so,  then,  indeed,  any  sum  in  coin  might  be  made  to  answer  in 
the  transfer  of  any  amount  of  values.  London  or  New  York,  by  the 
better  organization  of  its  circulating  system,  could  make  a  million  of 
pounds  or  dollars  answer  the  purposes  of  a  thousand  or  ten  thousand 
millions.  Nay,  to  push  ^he  proposition  to  the  extreme,  any  sum,  not 
so  small  as  to  check  the  circulation  of  its  certificates  or  representa 
tive  notes  too  much,  would  answer  all  the  purposes  of  money — the 
whole  fund  of  money — in  any  community.  The  effect  of  rapidity  of 
circulation  bears  relation  to  the  quantity  of  the  thing  circulated.  A 
hundred  making  ten  revolutions,  is  not  equal  to  a  thousand  making 
ten  or  five  or  two,  in  the  same  time. 

The  idea  of  circulation,  with  its  obvious  allusion  to  the  movement 
of  the  blood  in  the  animal  frame,  may  easily  be  pushed  farther  than 
the  true  analogy  warrants.  Blood,  in  the  animal  economy,  is  cir 
culated  as  the  conveyer  of  nutrient  matter  for  the  consumption  of 
the  textures,  and  as  a  stimulant  of  their  vital  functions ;  for  which 
purpose  constancy  and  sufficiency  of  supply,  that  is,  a  certain  rapidity 
of  movement  is  required,  and  for  this  a  certain  amount  of  propelling 
force.  In  greatly  increased  force  of  propulsion  and  rapidity  of 
movement  of  the  blood,  mischiefs  result,  for  which  there  is  no  proper 
parallel  in  the  circulation  of  money  in  the  channels  of  business. 
Momentum  of  the  blood  in  the  vascular  circulation  means,  besides 
quantity  delivered  in  relation  to  time,  force  of  impingement,  and 
pressure  upon  the  vital  organs.  There  are  no  such  mechanical 
effects  attending  the  changes  in  the  circulation  of  money,  nor  any 
thing  corresponding  to  mechanical  plethora  or  force.  The  dollar  in 


CREDIT    MONEY.  137 

great  rapidity  of  currency  does  not  strike  its  objects  the  harder,  nor 
gorge  its  receptacles  the  more,  nor,  as  a  result,  morbidly  exaggerate  or 
repress  the  activities  of  the  things  on  which  it  operates, — there  is 
no  such  disease  as  money  apoplexy — and  for  these  reasons,  the  pro 
cess  called  contraction  of  the  currency  is  not  indicated  as  a  remedy 
corresponding  to  venesection  in  febrile  or  inflammatory  states  of  the 
animal  body.  Money  circulation  cannot  by  excess  over-stimulate 
industry  so  as  to  mar  its  functions,  nor  can  it  arrest  them  as  by  an 
apoplectic  congestion.  Figures  of  speech  must  be  watched, 'or  they 
get  themselves  substituted  in  our  reasonings  for  facts  which  do  not 
exist.  It  seems  to  us  that  both  Smith  and  Macaulay,  and  many 
another  thinker  upon  the  offices  of  money,  have  had  their  fancies 
tricked  by  making  their  parables  go  on  all-fours  in  illustrations  of 
very  unlike  modes  of  progression. 

We  cannot  by  simple  addition  or  multiplication  measure  the  effect 
of  any  increase  in  the  rapidity  of  a  money  circulation.  Ten  times 
exchanged  is  not  a  ten-fold  increase  in  the  use  of  money,  equivalent 
to  a  ten-fold  quantity  once  moved.  The  effect  of  such  increase  of 
velocity  is  indeed  immense,  but  under  conditions  which  render  it 
incalculable  by  any  arithmetical  process.  It  saves  time  and  labor, 
but  it  does  infinitely  more  by  employing  time  usefully  that  must 
otherwise  be  wasted.  It  saves  money  by  making  money  for  money ; 
it  saves  labor  by  employing  it  more  productively  and  profitably,  and 
all  this  in  various  degrees,  from  the  least  up  to  immeasurable 
amounts,  and  to  effects  still  more  inestimable  in  their  influence  upon 
the  social  life  of  men.  Our  objection  is  to  the  multiplying,  squar 
ing  or  cubing  results  that  are  absolutely  incommensurable,  because 
of  the  reflex  error  that  is  made  to  fall  upon  the  management  of 
the  factors  of  the  problem.  "VVe  must  take  care  not  to  say  that 
a  thousand  dollars  circulated  ten  times,  is  just  equal  in  its  commer 
cial  or  industrial  stimulus  to  ten  thousand  dollars  once  moved ;  for, 
by  the  same  rule  we  can  imagine  the  impulsive  power  of  any  sum 
made  equal  to  any  other  sum  for  all  purposes  in  proportioned  mul 
tiples  of  exchanges,  and  thus  confuse  our  notion  of  its  proper  in 
herent  force.  There  is  an  ideal  money,  or  measure,  with  which  logic 
may  deal  at  will,  but  there  is  also  a  substantial  money  which  has  an 
intrinsic  value,  requiring  us  to  treat  it  as  we  do  any  other  com 
modity  in  use.  And  we  must,  if  we  would  think  to  any  purpose, 
keep  in  mind  that  the  value  of  this  money  is  the  cost  of  its  produc- 
10 


138  QUESTIONS    OF    THE   DAY. 

tion,  or  reproduction  at  the  time  in  which  it  is  used  in  exchange, 
and  that  wherever  it  goes,  or  however  often  transferred,  it  carries 
with  it  just  its  own  inherent  or  representative  value;  and  that  for 
this  reason,  no  particular  sum  of  it  can  be  thought  of  as  equivalent 
to  any  other  sum  or  sums  moving  faster  or  slower.  And,  above  all, 
we  must  not  ride  to  death  the  loose  analogies  commonly  employed 
in  the  discussion. 

Now  let  us  see  what  modification  of  use  and  operation  a  banker 
or  deposit  bank  produces  upon  the  money  of  a  community.  In  the 
first  place,  the  depositary  gathers  up  the  unemployed  surpluses  from 
every  point,  as  a  river  collects  the  thousand  rills  of  its  vicinity,  and 
gives  them  the  flow  and  the  force  of  accumulation.  The  affluents, 
too  feeble  singly  for  effectiveness  and  direction  in  use,  become  a  tide 
of  power,  ready  for  every  diversity  of  productive  employment.  The 
difference  is  that  between  threads  and  the  cable  which  they  com 
pose  ;  between  the  rills  of  the  hill  sides  and  the  current  that  turns 
the  mills  of  the  valley. 

Money  seeks  profit  and  security.  A  bank  or  a  banker  offering  a 
moderate  interest  or  only  safe  keeping  and  prompt  delivery,  invites 
deposits  by  the  confidence  reposed  in  him,  more  than  by  the 
amount  of  interest  allowed;  and  such  advantages  to  the  owner  draw 
out  the  thousand  little  hoards  into  an  aggregate  that,  well  and  wisely 
distributed  from  a  central  position,  gives  life  and  power  and  the  best 
direction  to  the  enterprise  and  waiting  labor  of  the  whole  mass  of 
the  community.  Beside  the  service  of  adepts  secured  by  the  in 
terposition  of  depositaries  selected  for  their  acquaintance  with  the 
business  of  the  country  and  its  requirements,  and  with  the  enter 
prise  and  abilities  of  customers,  the  bankers  are  generally  such  as 
are  themselves  large  contributors  to  the  fund  which  they  administer, 
and  so,  are  in  all  respects  qualified  for  the  great  business  of  turning 
the  master  wheel  of  the  general  business  machinery.  To  secure  all 
the  requisites,  many  corporators  are,  as  a  rule,  preferable  to  a  single 
person  in  this  function.  From  such  combinations  we  have  what  in 
modern  times  are  called  banks  of  deposit  and  discount — incorporated 
institutions  put  under  the  general  control  of  their  stockholders,  who, 
in  other  words,  may  be  termed  permanent  depositors,  taking  profits 
instead  of  interest,  and  standing  as  joint  debtors  to  the  outside  de 
positors  upon  interest,  and  joint  creditors  to  those  who  borrow  the 
money  and  credit  of  the  institution. 


CREDIT    MONEY.  139 

The  Bank  of  Amsterdam,  established  in  A.  D.  1609,  was  the 
earliest  considerable  institution  of  this  kind  which  looked  to  the 
promotion  of  commerce  among  the  people;  its  predecessors  of  the 
twelfth  century,  in  Venice  and  Genoa,  having  been  chiefly  devoted 
to  the  management  of  state  finances.  This  bank  was  guaranteed  by, 
and  was  under  the  authority  of,  the  city.  It  continued  to  serve  the 
public,  and  to  promote  the  prosperity  of  the  city  for  nearly  two  cen 
turies.  It  failed  in  1790.  With  the  particular  provisions  of  its  govern 
ment  and  principles  of  its  management,  we  are  not  here  concerned, 
nor  with  the  causes  which  specially  led  to  its  establishment,  further 
than  that  the  abrasion  of  the  coins  previously  in  use,  and  the  other 
injuries  to  which  they  were  exposed,  put  them  as  a  currency  at  eight 
or  ten  per  cent  discount.  These  things,  with  all  the  troubles  and 
vexations  attending  the  exclusive  use  of  coins  in  payment,  drove  the 
business  community  into  the  necessity  of  contriving  a  plan  by  which 
coins  should  serve  as  pledges  for  payment,  while  the  certificates  of 
deposit  were  substituted  in  transferring  the  property  in  the  corns, 
without  passing  the  coins  themselves  from  hand  to  hand,  after  the 
manner  of  barbarous  commerce. 

A  simple  depository  for  money — not  necessarily  used  in  the  smaller 
affairs  of  business,  or  in  transactions  with  strangers,  or  persons  igno 
rant  of  the  security  of  the  fund — is  in  its  narrowest  sense  a  place  of 
safe  keeping  where  the  money  is  held  ready  to  answer  the  demand 
of  the  depositor.  If  the  identical  coins,  bars,  or  notes,  so  deposited, 
were  to  be  returned,  and  must  lie  idle  till  called  for,  the  whole 
operation  would  be  merely  a  matter  of  custody,  and  could  produce 
no  other  effect  upon  the  money  function  than  if  the  several  sums 
were  kept  under  the  private  lock  and  key  of  the  owners.  Security 
might  be  increased  and  some  inconvenience  avoided,  and  for  these 
advantages  the  depositor  would  be  justly  and  necessarily  chargeable 
to  the  value  of  the  service  rendered  to  him ;  but  there  follows  of 
course  the  right  of  transferring  the  property  in  the  deposited  money 
from  the  owner  to  others  at  will,  without  any  movement  of  the  de 
posited  money  itself.  At  this  point  the  business  of  banking  opens. 

Banking,  in  all  its  kinds,  rests  upon  this  power  of  transferring 
the  right  to  the  thing  without  touching  the  thing  itself,  and  here 
the  representative  certificate,  or  note,  or  draft,  takes  the  place  of 
the  substance;  the  substance  is  converted  from  use  as  an  active 
agent  into  a  pledge;  the  certificate,  or  note,  or  draft,  becomes  a 


140  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

promise,  serving  instead  of  a  payment,  and  serving  just  as  well, 
but  with  an  ingredient  in  it  unknown  to  business  effected  by 
actual  transfer  of  money  in  payment — the  ingredient  of  Credit, 
which  implies  confidence  and  fidelity.  This  credit  principle  is  the 
faith  that  removes  mountains.  It  is  the  miracle  power  that  changes 
water  into  wine;  the  multiplying  power  which  feeds  five  thousand 
Ineti  with  five  loaves,  and  leaves  a  basket  full  for  each  of  the  agents 
of  distribution. 

A  common  note  of  hand,  negotiable  in  its  terms,  payable  to 
assignee  or  bearer,  performs  the  function  of  money  to  its  nominal 
amount  for  as  many  transferees  as  will  accept  it  in  the  faith  that 
it  will  be  paid  by  the  promisor  to  the  holder.  The  draft  of  a  de 
positor,  where  the  like  faith  is  given  to  him  and  to  the  banker, 
serves  at  every  turn  instead  of  the  money  which  it  represents,  and 
so,  the  abstract  property  in  the  money  of  a  community,  gathered 
together  and  secured  through  the  operation  of  market-faith,  multi 
plies  indefinitely  the  service  of  the  great  instrument  of  all  produc 
tion  and  exchange. 

Faith  in  the  fulfillment  of  promise,  made  by  the  substitute,  is 
the  power  that  moves  the  mass  of  human  business,  as  the  com 
pound  pulley  lifts  weights  vastly  disproportioned  to  the  hand  power 
which  puts  it  into  motion  :  the  indirectness  of  action  in  the  credit 
system,  and  in  the  mechanical  machine,  being  alike  evasive  of  the 
resistance  to  be  overcome,  and  alike  triumphant  by  virtue  of  such 
evasion.  As  a  single  man  lifts  a  ton's  weight,  so  a  single  dollar  may 
move  a  thousand  in  values,  by  the  magical  power  of  adapted  in 
struments. 

How  far  faith  goes  in  business  is  apparent  when  any  medium  of 
exchange,  having  no  intrinsic  value  in  itself,  is  employed, — whether 
the  instrument  be  a  draft,  bank  note,  note  of  hand,  or  a  book-of- 
entry  charge ;  how  much  further  than  the  actual  pledge  warrants, 
was  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  Bank  of  Amsterdam  carried  on  its 
immense  business  for  full  fifty  years  after  the  great  bulk  of  its 
capital  had  been  secretly  loaned  to  the  Government  of  the  States 
General,  to  the  East  India  Company,  and  to  the  city  of  Amster 
dam;  none  of  which  were  in  condition  to  make  instant  restitu 
tion,  and  so  the  bank  failed  or  exploded,  though  it  had  been  doing 
a  business  of  not  less  than  five  thousand  millions  of  dollars  a 
year  so  long  as  faith  held  in  the  security  of  the  deposits  or  funds 


CREDIT    MONEY.  141 

on  which  its  paper  rested.  The  treasure  amassed  in  its  vaults  was 
estimated  at  not  less  than  fifty  millions,  and  the  property  in  this 
value  moved  by  the  bank  one  hundred  times  a  year  makes  the 
enormous  amount  of  the  exchanges  here  stated. 

We  do  not  know  the  amount  of  loss,  or  the  amount  of  deferred 
payment,  with  the  incident  loss  of  the  holders  of  its  paper,  when 
the  discovery  of  its  mismanagement  was  made,  but  for  half  a 
century  faith  in  its  solvency  had  maintained  the  commerce  which 
it  conducted  without  check  or  loss,  or  other  disadvantage;  and,  if 
the  ultimate  losses  could  have  been  distributed  in  fair  proportion 
among  all  its  customers  during  the  two  centuries  of  its  service  to 
their  business,  they  would  have  been  still  immensely  its  debtors  for 
benefits  received.  After  all,  the  Just  live  by  Faith.  The  higher 
the  truth  the  higher  the  life,  and  all  the  losses  by  the  abuses  of  the 
principle  are  in  the  end  as  nothing  to  the  issuing  benefits.  The 
principle  at  work  here,  aye,  even  in  the  banking  system,  is  that  of 
cooperation — the  brotherhood  of  business,  the  community  of  risks, 
for  the  sake  of  the  community  of  profits ;  in  which,  as  in  the 
things  intended  by  the  Apostle — "  Look  not  every  man  upon  his 
own  things,  but  every  man  also  on  the  things  of  others"  (Phil, 
ii.,  4),  the  policy  of  the  secular  exactly  corresponds  to  that  of 
spiritual  life,  and  is  put  under  the  same  laws ;  for,  though  corpora 
tions,  and  especially  money  corporations,  have  made  themselves  a 
proverb  of  selfishness  and  injustice,  they  nevertheless  have  hold  of 
the  miracle  power,  and  "He  maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and 
on  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust,"  who 
alike  faithfully  employ  the  agencies  which  provide  the  harvest. 

Banks  serving  as  depositories  for  the  spare  money  of  those  who 
confide  in  their  solvency,  by  adding  to  the  simple  safe  keeping  of  the 
fund  the  further  function  of  discounting  the  paper  of  borrowers, 
may  employ  such  amassed  deposits  in  various  proportions  to  the  total 
on  deposit,  according  to  the  range  of  their  business,  the  strength  of 
the  stockholders  or  permanent  investors,  and  the  reputation  of  the 
institutions.  There  always  will  be  unclaimed  balances  in  the  vaults 
of  the  banks,  while  they  have  the  public  confidence,  say  from  one- 
fourth  to  one-third  of  the  temporary  deposits,  and  they  may  lend, 
besides,  upon  the  capital  paid  in  not  only  the  whole  amount,  but  a 
further  amount  equal  to  the  capital  itself  in  well  established  institu 
tions.  Here  there  is  a  source  of  profit,  which  enables  them  not  only 


142  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY." 

» 

to  hold  money  for  safe  keeping  free  of  charge  to  the  depositors,  but 
to  invite  more  investments,  and  for  longer  periods,  by  paying  an  in 
terest  upon  them — less  than  the  rates  at  which  they  lend,  of  course — 
but  large  enough  to  induce  the  holders  of  idle  money  to  leave  it  with 
them.  Certain  banks  in  our  eastern  cities,  dealing  exclusively  upon 
their  capital  and  deposits  are  able  to  divide  ten  or  twelve  per  cent 
to  the  shareholders.  One  such  bank  reports  above  a  million  dollars 
in  its  deposit  accounts,  for  which  it  pays  no  interest,  while  the  capi 
tal  is  no  more  than  $-±00,000.  It  appears  quite  possible  to  make 
large  profits  above  expenses,  when  it  is  seen  that  this  bank  reports 
loans  to  the  amount  of  81,371,592.  Here  its  capital  is  twice  loaned, 
and  quite  one-half  of  its  deposits  besides ;  and  the  bank  is  thus  re 
ceiving  perhaps  six  per  cent  upon  nearly  a  million  over  and  above  its 
paid-in  capital.  But  its  undivided  profits  amount  to  a  surplus  fund 
of  one  hundred  thousand  dollars.  Including  this  sum  in  its  effective 
capital,  it  is  doing  business  upon  above  two  and  a  half  times  the 
amount  that  it  owns. 

But  our  business  is  now  with  the  effect  of  credit  added  to  capital 
by  the  operation  of  concentrating  money,  and  by  turning  their  com 
bined  forces  into  the  channels  of  business.  The  elements  of  this 
business  are  1st,  the  accumulation  of  unemployed  money  at  centres 
of  deposit,  where  all  the  inconsiderable  and  inefficient  supplies  are 
combined  into  effective  forces ;  2d,  the  activity  given  such  funds  in 
graduated  portions,  under  the  direction  of  adepts  in  business,  by 
loans  to  those  who  will  employ  them  as  capital  in  production  ;  which 
brings  the  waiting  labor  of  the  country  and  the  raw  material  lying 
idle  into  the  service  of  the  community;  3d,  the  enhancement  of  the 
proper  power  of  the  aggregated  fund,  by  the  percentage  of  credit 
which  it  brings  to  the  bank  or  banker  who  administers  the  fund; 
which,  while  it  is  kept  within  safe  limits,  is  not  an  unreal  capital,  but 
an  anticipation  of  the  product  which  it  will  in  good  time  make 
actual  and  available, — a  process  by  which  nothing  but  time  is  bor 
rowed,  that  it  may  not  be  wasted ;  or,  the  sum  which  might  be 
realized  is  made  actual  by  anticipating  the  capital  required  to  effect 
the  answering  production. 

This  addition  which  credit  adds  to  capital,  by  being  well  based 
upon  it,  is  the  grand  feature  of  the  policy.  In  it  lies  the  master 
power,  to  which  the  growth  of  the  general  wealth  is  due,  and  especi 
ally  is  it  the  beneficent  element  in  the  business  life  of  men,  which 


CREDIT    MONEY.  143 

mitigates  the  inequalities  of  individual  wealth.  Credit  acknow 
ledges  the  worth  of  character.  The  man  who  has  no  other  property, 
is  made  capital  in  himself,  for  his  own  benefit,  and  talents  and  in 
dustry  are  thus  lifted  out  of  the  disabilities  of  poverty  into  their  ut 
most  serviceableness  to  society.  Credit  is  the  motor  force  that  raises 
indigence  into  wealth,  and  so  converts  selfishness  into  beneficence  in 
its  effects,  and  greatly  tends  to  conform  the  sentiment  to  the  ex 
cellence  of  the  providential  results.  This  excellent  thing,  however, 
is  much  abused.  Used  in  bad  faith,  it  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  the 
pecuniary  mishaps  of  business  life.  But  this  is  just  because  it  is  so 
essential  in  the  economy  of  business  that  it  must  be  active  for  good, 
and  is  therefore  always  present  and  liable  to  be  perverted. 

As  much  may  be  said,  and  said  no  less  foolishly,  against  liberty — 
moral,  political,  and  social.  The  means  of  advancement  must  be 
capable  of  mischief,  if  they  have  anything  of  good  in  them  for  use. 
Steam  power  is  just  as  liable  to  do  mischief,  and  in  the  very  pro 
portion  of  its  capability  for  good  service.  Is  there  any  endowment 
of  mind  or  morals;  any  instrument  subject  to  human  discretion, 
which  is  not  exactly  as  mischievous  as  beneficial  in  its  possibilities? 
The  sins  of  the  credit  system  are  the  best  indications  of  its  capa 
bilities  of  good.  A  big  evil  cannot  be  made  out  of  a  little  thing. 
Evils  are  strictly  nothing  but  abuses. 

A  society  without  a  credit  system  is  simply  savage.  A  business 
economy,  whose  capital  should  be  limited  to  material  property,  would 
be  a  despotism  of  property,  as  inflexible  as  Hindu  caste,  and  as  dead 
as  the  insensate  earth,  where  all  that  is  precious  is  in  the  fixity  of 
crystals,  and  all  that  is  common,  is  as  incapable  as  the  rocks  in  which 
the  gold  and  silver  are  coffined. 

All  of  which  leads  us  the  further  step  in  the  question  of  currency 
that  embraces  the  bank  note ;  which  in  itself  differs  nothing  intrin 
sically  from  the  check,  draft,  or  certificate  of  deposit  used  in  trans 
ferring  the  property  in  money  on  deposit.  But  it  does  differ  in 
form,  convenience,  availability,  and  range  of  circulation,  materially. 
These  are  very  important  differences;  for,  as  money  itself  has  its 
chief  serviceableness  in  its  convenience,  whatever  affects  this  prop 
erty  is  no  less  important  than  anything  intrinsic  belonging  to,  or 
wanting  in  it,  as  a  medium  of  exchange. 

It  is  obvious  that  a  certificate  of  deposit,  which,  like  a  circulating 
note,  is  a  promise  to  pay  money,  must  necessarily  be  for  some  specific 


144  QUESTIONS    OF    THE   DAY. 

sum,  and  nine  times  in  ten  must  be  unadapted  for  use  except  by 
men  engaged  in  considerable  business.  It  is  not  the  thing  to  carry 
to  the  market-house,  to  a  railroad  office,  or  a  grocery  store,  nor  will 
it  meet  the  little  current  expenses  of  every  day;  and  worst  of  all,  it 
would  not  suit  for  the  payment  of  wages.  If  broken  up  into  con 
venient  portions  for  current  use,  it  would  be  bank  notes  to  all  in 
tents  and  purposes ;  and  only  because  a  credit  or  deposit  in  bank 
needs  to  be  so  used,  is  the  evidence  of  the  claim,  shaped  into  notes 
of  such  denominations  as  will  serve  the  more  general  and  most  needed 
purposes  of  such  credits.  The  draft  of  the  depositor  follows  and 
conforms  to  every  variety  of  transfers  desired,  and  usually  is  sent  to 
the  bank  to  be  there  changed  into  notes  for  common  use. 

The  transfer  of  determinate  sums,  especially  of  sums  larger 
than  those  most  commonly  required  in  every  day  affairs,  or  among 
people  having  no  mutuality  of  dealings,  or  those  who  cannot,  or  do 
not,  meet  in  any  sort  of  clearing-house  operations,  can  be  very  well 
managed  by  drafts  upon  deposit  banks.  These  facts  help  us  to  see 
more  accurately  the  office  of  the  bank  note.  It  is  plainly  limited  to 
the  smaller  businesses,  to  daily  expenses,  and  is,  therefore,  peculiarly 
the  money  of  the  people  who  live  from  day  to  day  upon  their  daily 
or  weekly  receipts.  Banks  do  not  use  them  among  themselves,  ex 
cept  for  redemption.  Merchants  use  them  only  for  change,  and 
manufacturers,  only  for  payment  of  wages  in  their  business.  Like 
specie  they  come  into  service  only  in  the  odds  and  ends  of  affairs, 
and  so,  differ  from  coins  only  by  being  so  much  more  convenient  for 
use. 

Bank  notes  are  credit  money ;  but  they  are  substantially  limited 
to  credit  in  retail.  The  wholesale  credit  money  has  no  such  uses 
and  needs  no  such  forms.  They  are,  therefore,  the  money  of  peo 
ple  of  limited  means,  and  of  others  for  limited  expenses.  They 
make  the  payments  of  every  day  and  hour,  and  are  ever  on  the 
wing.  They  have  not  time  to  earn  interest  for  any  owner  except 
the  issuing  bank,  and  for  it  only  when  they  are  loaned  upon  time. 
The  travels  and  adventures  of  a  bank  note  would  be  such  a 
history  of  society  as  never  yet  was  written,  and  never  will  be.  If 
it  were  as  nearly  omniscient  as  it  is  ubiquitous,  government,  phi 
lanthropy,  political  economy — whatever  of  thought  and  endeavor, 
concerned  with  human  affairs,  would  find  in  its  journal  an  encyclo 
pedia  of  facts,  which  they  all  need  more  than  they  need  anything 


CREDIT    MONEY.  145 

else.     The  freest  play  of  fancy,  in   following  its  wanderings,  will 
help  somewhat  in  the  estimate  of  its  utility. 

By  the  lank  note,  when  spoken  of  in  general  terms  as  an  instru 
ment  of  exchange,  is  not  intended  a  distinctive  designation  of 
paper  money  issued  by  money  institutions,  whether  corporate  or 
incorporate.  The  term  means,  in  this  general  sense,  the  circulating 
note,  and  as  the  paper  currency  of  most  countries,  and  at  almost  all 
times,  consists  of  the  paper  of  such  institutions,  exclusively,  the 
term  is  sufficiently  accurate.  But  in  the  experience  of  the  United 
States  since  the  beginning  of  the  late  civil  war,  a  supply  of  circu 
lating  notes  rising  at  one  time  (April,  1864)  to  the  sum  of  four 
hundred  and  sixty  millions  of  dollars,  and  standing  on  the  first  of 
January,  1871,  at  three  hundred  and  ninety  millions,  issued  by  the 
Federal  Government,  served  the  same  uses  to  the  public  as  the 
bank  notes  of  ordinary  times.  These  notes,  along  with  a  great 
mass  of  other  evidences  of  national  debt,  in  other  forms  and  for 
greatly  larger  amounts,  were  issued  and  circulated  on  no  other  basis 
or  pledge  for  redemption  than  the  faith  of  the  Government.  They 
were  not  even  made  convertible  on  demand  into  gold  and  silver.  The 
only  form  of  redemption  on  demand  specifically  promised  was  the 
engagement  to  receive  them  at  the  Treasury  and  Sub-Treasuries  for 
all  public  dues,  except  import  duties.  Some  additional  value  was 
given  them  by  making  them  a  legal  tender  in  all  the  business 
transactions  of  the  people,  among  themselves  and  with  the  govern 
ment,  except  in  the  matter  of  import  duties  and  interest  upon  the 
public  debt.  This  money  was  issued  as  evidence  of  indebtedness 
when  the  expenditures  of  the  nation  greatly  exceeded  its  receipts, 
and  it  must  necessarily  be  continued  in  circulation  until  it  can  be 
either  redeemed  in  specie,  or  vested  in  a  more  permanent  form  of 
indebtedness,  absorbed  in  taxes,  or  withdrawn  by  all  these  means 
combined.  Its  quantity,  in  use  for  four  years  running,  was  more 
than  double  the  amount  of  paper  money  in  circulation  at  any  time 
before  the  war;  and  after  ten  years  its  amount  is  still  (1871)  one 
hundred  and  seventy-six  millions,  or  eighty-two  per  cent  greater. 
Beside  this  great  amount  of  paper,  irredeemable  on  demand,  we 
have  had  an  additional  three  hundred  millions  of  national  bank 
notes  in  use,  which,  as  to  basis  of  redemption  and  convertibility, 
may  be  described  as  in  the  same  predicament;  for  those  national 
banks,  thus  responsible  to  the  public  for  three  hundred  millions  of 


146  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

currency,  have  held  nothing  besides  United  States  bonds  and  notes, 
real  estate,  and  a  little  over  twenty-three  millions  of  specie,  to  meet 
their  liabilities  to  the  note  holders  and  to  their  depositors,  which 
last  indebtedness  aggregates  above  five  hundred  millions. 

During  nine  years  specie  has  been  demonetized.  It  has  stood  as 
a  commodity  of  the  market,  ranging  in  price,  through  almost  the 
whole  period,  from  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  to  two  hundred  and 
eighty-five  dollars  in  currency  for  one  hundred  in  gold.  If  this 
difference  is  taken  to  be  depreciation  of  the  currency,  then,  it  was 
passing  at  a  discount  of  from  twenty  to  sixty-five  per  cent,  through 
the  range  of  fluctuation,  which  covers  quite  seven  of  the  last  years 
since  the  suspension  of  specie  payments  in  December,  1861. 

Here  we  have  the  vast  business  of  a  nation  of  over  thirty-five 
millions  of  people,  worth  twenty  thousand  millions  in  capital,  during 
a  war  period  involving  an  expenditure  of  five  thousand  millions 
beyond  the  ordinary  business  of  times  of  peace,  and  carrying  on, 
besides,  a  system  of  internal  improvement  of  unparalleled  outlay, 
and  all  effected  through  the  agency  of  a  paper  circulation  usually 
styled  irredeemable,  and,  at  any  rate,  for  the  time  inconvertible  at 
the  par  of  gold.  That  war  period  has  been  passed  quite  six  years, 
and  as  yet  we  have  had  no  revulsion  •  no  general  or  remarkable  loss 
of  individual  prosperity;  no  catastrophe  to  the  general  industry;  and 
so  far  from  a  failure,  a  positive  and  constant  improvement  of  the 
public  credit.  This  picture,  if  complete,  would  show  to  the  full  the 
service  there  is  in  the  circulating  note,  as  a  medium  for  effecting  the 
exchanges  of  commodities  and  services,  among  a  people  who,  in  this 
time  of  trial,  have  lived  through  the  ordinary  experiences  of  fifty 
years  in  the  space  of  ten,  every  day  indeed  may  be  counted  a  week 
of  the  ordinary  business  life  of  a  people,  and  every  day  of  this 
history  will  tell  as  a  week  in  the  future  of  the  nation. 

Is  there  anything  in  all  this  story,  or,  is  there  anything  yet  to 
come  of  it,  to  keep  in  countenance  the  financial  disesteem  of  theorists 
for  the  circulating  note  ?  Is  there  enough,  in  all  the  frauds  and 
follies  incident  to  paper  money,  to  balance  its  services  in  all  times, 
whether  they  be  of  war  or  peace  ? 

Surely  there  is  nothing  in  the  nicknames,  depreciated  currency, 
irredeemable  rag  money,  paper  promises,  unreal,  or  the  like  terms, 
that  can  settle  the  policy  of  commerce  and  finance  as  it  is  concerned 
in  them.  Paper  money  is  the  resort  of  all  nations  under  severe 


CREDIT    MONEY.  147 

trials — let  this  fact  have  its  due  force.  There  is  no  such  opprobium 
attached  to  National,  State,  or  Corporate  stocks,  though  they  are  all 
debts  resting  upon  the  present  and  prospective  solvency  of  the  issu 
ing  party,  as  much  as  are  national  and  bank  circulating  notes,  and 
in  no  case,  a  whit  more  secure,  or  less  liable  to  abuse,  or  followed  by 
any  other  or  lesser  mischief;  but  differing  from  such  stocks  in  one 
grand  particular  for  the  better,  in  that  they  are  not  exportable  to 
foreign  countries,  nor  do  they  carry  with  them,  as  stocks  do,  a  profit 
to  foreigners,  who  bear  none  of  the  burdens. of  the  country  which 
must  pay  them  and  their  current  interest. 

We  have  already  claimed  for  the  circulating  note  the  character  of 
being  specially  the  money  of  the  common  people,  upon  whose  in 
dustry  the  general  welfare  so  largely  depends;  and  here  we  think  it 
worth  adding  to  its  claims,  the  fact  that  it  has  been  to  us  the  only 
form  of  money  which  in  our  greatest  exigency  did  not  desert  our 
service,  by  going  into  that  of  any  foreign  people.  Intelligent 
patriotism  will  find  in  this  specialty  of  the  greenbacks  and  the 
national  bank  notes,  a  title  to  the  name  of  American  money,  while 
philanthropy  accords  to  them  besides,  the  distinctive  designation  of 
the  money  of  the  common  people. 

We  have  seen  that  a  bank  of  deposit  and  discount,  without  issu 
ing  a  circulating  currency,  can  well  maintain  itself  upon  its  profits 
over  and  above  all  expenses,  and  even  with  an  allowance  of  interest 
equal  to  one-half  or  two-thirds  of  the  rate  at  which  it  lends  its  funds 
and  credit;  and  that,  even  while  thus  limited  in  its  banking  func 
tions,  it  serves  excellent,  even  indispensable,  uses  to  the  community, 
to  the  depositors,  to  the  borrowers,  and  to  all  the  dependent  indus 
tries.  We  have  noticed,  also,  that  it  is  indifferent  to  the  operations  of 
a  bank  whether  it  issues  its  obligations  in  the  form  of  certificates 
for  the  varied  amounts  of  the  credits  it  gives,  or  in  the  form  of  cir 
culating  notes  of  such  denominations  as  best  answer  the  common 
purposes  of  small  money  dealings  among  the  people.  Whatever 
it  promises  to  pay  on  demand  may  take  any  form  which  does  not  by 
contract  alter  the  liability  of  the  issuers.  In  practice,  however,  the 
circulating  notes  expose  the  bank  to  a  run  when  any  reason  arises 
for  converting  them  into  specie,  whether  it  be  on  account  of  a  rise 
in  the  value  of,  or  increase  in  the  demand  for,  the  precious  metals,  or 
apprehensions  for  the  solvency  of  the  bank,  or  doubt  of  its  ability 
to  redeem  them  on  the  instant  of  demand.  For  such  reasons,  cer- 


148  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

tain  banks  in  the  great  centres  of  trade,  which  can  command  a  suffi 
cient  deposit  business,  prefer  to  use  no  circulation  for  whose  redemp 
tion  they  are  responsible. 

The  profit  of  a  circulation  is  all  in  addition  to  the  earnings  upon 
capital  and  deposits,  because  this  profit  is  made  not  upon  funds  held, 
but  upon  credit  loaned,  for  which  the  reserve  for  redemption  need  not 
be  any  greater  in  proportion  than  upon  the  deposits.  The  national 
banks  are  not  required  by  law  to  keep  inactive  more  than  twenty- 
five  per  cent  of  their  total  demand  liabilities,  in  order  to  meet  them. 

The  aggregate  loans  of  twenty-eight  city  banks  (in  November, 
1869)  yielded,  at  the  average  minimum  rate  of  six  per  cent  per 
annum  upon  their  loans,  twenty  per  cent  upon  the  par  of  the 
capital,  and  their  aggregate  of  circulation  and  deposits  amounted  to 
843,269,000  for  the  payment  of  which  they  held  but  $13,713,000, 
so  that  these  city  banks  were  able,  under  existing  circumstances,  to 
lend  twice  the  amount  of  their  capital  by  the  aid  of  their  surplus 
funds,  and  thirty-three  per  cent  of  their  deposits. 

Bank  deposits,  so  called,  consist  to  a  large  amount  of  mere  credits 
on  the  books  of  the  banks,  being  their  loans  to  borrowers.  It  is  safe, 
perhaps,  to  estimate  their  sixteen  millions  of  capital  as  serving  for 
thirty-two  millions  of  money,  another  eleven  millions  of  deposits 
(one-third  of  the  total)  consisting  simply  of  bank  credits,  and 
ten  millions  more  of  bank  debts  in  the  form  of  circulating  notes, 
based  upon  eleven  millions  of  national  debt;  and  we  have  in  effect 
a  sum  of  actual  money  consisting  of  sixteen  millions  of  capital  and 
six  millions  of  surplus  funds,  amounting  together  to  twenty-two 
millions,  made  to  serve  as  fifty-three  millions,  or  within  a  fraction 
of  two  and  a  half  times  the  amount  represented. 

The  preceding  calculations  were  made  from  the  bank  reports 
of  November,  1869.  On  the  22d  of  May,  1871,  the  same  banks 
report  their  capital  at  sixteen  millions,  four  hundred  thousand, 
their  loans  at  fifty-five  millions,  and  deposits  at  thirty-seven  mil 
lions  four  hundred  thousand.  If  their  aggregate  surplus  funds 
stood  at  six  millions,  they  were  able  to  lend  their  effective  capital 
twice,  and  twenty-seven  per  cent  of  their  deposits. 

So  much  for  the  mere  credit  element  of  the  existing  money  sys 
tem,  and  of  its  capability,  in  favoring  circumstances,  of  enhancing 
the  service  of  the  actual  money  of  the  country  in  its  industrial  and 
commercial  affairs. 


CREDIT    MONEY.  149 

To  resume.  The  agencies  by  which  the  service  of  money  is  utilized 
by  accumulation,  multiplied  in  rapidity  of  movement,  and  distrib 
uted  effectively  through  its  focal  centres,  are  in  serial  order  of 
adoption  and  in  rank  of  service :  1st.  The  simple  depository  in 
which  money  is  held  for  safe  keeping,  and  returned,  as  it  was  de 
posited,  to  the  owner;  the  property  in  it  being  transferable  only  by 
actual  delivery.  2d.  The  deposit  bank,  holding  the  money  and 
issuing  negotiable  certificates,  or  answering  drafts,  payable  to 
drawee,  assignee,  or  bearer ;  by  which  method  not  only  such 
drafts  or  certificates  become  a  circulation  within  a  limited  range, 
but  the  depositary  may  safely  issue  his  notes  or  certificates  to  an 
amount  considerably  exceeding  the  sum  in  his  vaults,  either  by  dis 
counts  or  by  accommodation  loans;  thus  not  only  increasing  the 
rapidity  of  the  actual  money  employed,  but  enlarging  its  force  to 
the  extent  of  the  margin  taken.  3d.  A  depositary  for  the  spare 
money  of  the  community,  making  loans  upon  it,  by  accommodation, 
and  by  discount  of  assigned  debts  not  matured,  and  by  issuance  of 
the  circulating  notes  which  constitute  the  paper  money  currency  of 
modern  business  policy. 

All  these  businesses  distinctively,  and  the  whole  of  them  com 
bined,  in  the  functions  of  the  banks  of  the  last  two  or  three  cen 
turies,  and  at  the  present  time  almost  universally  in  use,  being 
based — in  the  simplest  and  earliest  form — upon  the  reputation  of 
the  depositary:  and,  in  the  more  complicated  and  complete!  form, 
upon  actual  capital  pledged  to  about  one-third  of  the  active  amount, 
and  for  the  other  two-thirds,  upon  credit  only. 

This  being  substantially  the  monetary  policy  of  leading  nations, 
and  approximately  the  proportion  of  capital  to  credit  in  the  basis 
of  the  banking  system  in  its  most  general  forms,  we  are  not  left  at 
a  loss  to  see  its  advantages,  on  the  one  hand,  and  its  risks  on  the 
other;  nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  of  its  necessity  to  the  economy 
of  productive  and  commercial  industry. 

Business  must  be  done  upon  trust.  It  is  impossible  to  conduct, 
or  to  forward,  the  affairs  of  civilized  men,  without  such  trust  or 
confidence  as  expands  itself  from  the  simple  confidence  involved  in 
all  exchanges  of  commodities  and  services,  into  the  most  artificial 
and  aggregative  range  of  the  credit  system  that  has  yet  been 
adopted.  A  hand-to-hand  exchange  system  of  direct  barter  is  pos- 


150  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

sible  or  suitable  only  to  such  a  state  of  savage  society  as  subsists 
in  a  hand-to-hand  battle  order  of  the  parties. 

There  is  no  resting  place  between  the  absolute  distrust  of  the 
unorganized  business  of  barbarous  states,  and  the  most  unreserved 
commitment  to  credit,  as  the  condition  of  all  economic  transactions. 
Nothing  can  be  done  to  any  purpose  by  narrowing  the  system. 
Everything  of  improvement  is  wholly  that  of  providing  such 
securities  as  it  admits  of.  England  has  employed  to  exhaustion  all 
the  sagacity  and  experience  of  two  hundred  years,  in  contriving 
avoidance  of  the  abuses  of  her  banking  system ;  yet  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  it  is  now  as  liable  to  objections,  and  as  frequently  mischievous 
as  in  the  first  year  of  its  institution.  Nevertheless,  it  has  never  been 
for  a  moment  in  danger  of  being  abandoned  on  account  of  its  evils. 
It  has  never  been  admitted  that  the  evils  experienced  and  feared 
were  necessary  attendants  of  the  monetary  system.  It  has  always 
been  clearly  known  that  some  form  of  credit-money  is  indispensable, 
and  it  is  acknowledged,  also,  that  the  balance  of  good  and  evil  has 
ever  been  in  its  favor ;  for  it  is  seen  that  immense  private  and 
national  prosperity  has,  nevertheless,  resulted  from  it.  Still  there 
hangs  over  the  whole  matter  a  mystery  which  embarrasses  the  man 
agement.  Every  jar  in  the  working  of  the  machinery  provokes 
the  best  and  brightest  of  the  business,  and  of  the  thinking,  world  to 
the  most  strenuous  endeavors  at  amendment,  which  are  never  for 
any  long  period  relaxed ;  but  as  yet  without  any  tolerable  approach 
to  complete  correction.  The  trouble  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole 
business  seems  to  be  this :  the  money  that  everybody  believes  in 
— the  money  that  needs  no  redemption — the  money  that  has  a  value 
in  itself — is  liable  to  at  least  two  grave  complaints :  first,  it  is  not, 
and  cannot  be  made,  adequate  to  the  work  required  of  it  by  those 
who  would  dispense  with  its  substitutes,  to  escape  their  insecurity ; 
and,  second,  it  is  so  inconvenient  and  expensive  that  the  exclusive 
use  of  it,  could  it  be  increased  to  tolerable  adequacy,  would  be  wholly 
unendurable.  An  exclusive  metallic  currency  in  the  money  market 
would  block  the  wheels  of  the  commodity  market,  and  throw  the 
world  back  to  the  economic  conditions  of  barbarism.  There  remains, 
therefore,  no  choice,  but  to  hold  by  the  credit  system,  and  the  only 
hope  left  is  in  its  amendment  in  the  wisest  and  most  practicable 
way. 

Men  must  make  up  their  minds  to  employ  unreal  money,  and 


CREDIT    MONEY.  151 

they  must  in  some  way  make  it  as  capable  and  reliable  as  they  can. 
The  students  of  the  credit  system  of  business  cannot  fail  to  see  how 
a  banking  system  of  some  kind  or  kinds  is  indispensable  to  the 
organization,  the  force,  and  convenience  of  industry  and  commerce, 
and  how  the  general  exchange  of  services  is  promoted  by  its  agency. 

There  follows  as  obviously  these  necessary  consequences :  that 
every  locality  requires  such  a  money  institution — a  centre  for  every 
district  where  spare  money  may  be  deposited  for  safe  keeping; 
where  a  moderate  interest  may  be  made  upon  sucji  deposits ;  where 
mutual  debts  may  be  set-off  against  each  other ;  where  the  actual 
amount  of  money  gathered  may  be  enhanced  in  its  operation  by 
such  supplemented  credit  as  the  banking  institutions  can  safely 
command;  where  adepts  in  business  may  distribute  the  activity  of 
such  gathered  capital  and  incident  credit,  through  the  channels  of 
productive  industry,  wisely  and  conveniently,  by  loans  or  discounts, 
to  the  general  benefit  of  the  community,  and  the  profit  of  the 
bank ;  and,  where  the  use  of  coin  may  be  spared  by  the  substitu 
tion  of  representative  circulating  notes,  of  assured  soundness,  and 
of  denominations  required  in  the  smaller  transactions  of  every-day 
business. 

We  cannot  too  frequently  recur  to  the  leading  idea  of  money — 
that  its  most  essential  and  central  quality  of  service  is  in  its  con 
venience,  as  an  exchanger  of  services  and  commodities.  This  is 
clear  in  the  abstract,  and  it  rules  the  policy  of  the  money  system 
through  all  its  actual  details.  Banks  being  the  agencies  or  ma 
chinery  of  the  money  system,  it  is  clear  that  as  depositories,  as 
clearing  houses,  as  reservoirs  for  the  distribution  of  currency  into 
the  channels  of  its  proper  work,  and,  as  necessary  administrators  of 
all  these  offices,  they  are  required  to  be  made  of  and  for  vicinages 
of  such  areas  and  activities  as  will  bring  them  home  for  all  their 
uses.  Their  number  should  be  limited  by  no  other  considerations 
than  necessary  convenience  of  location,  and  conformity  of  expense 
to  the  service  they  are  to  perform. 

The  organization  of  banks  best  approved  by  thorough  experience 
is  that  of  Scotland,  where  there  are  forty  banks  with  three  hundred 
and  forty  branches,  or  bank  offices,  distributed  over  an  area  equal 
to  only  two-thirds  of  that  of  the  State  of  New  York,  and  with  a 
population  thirty  per  cent  less.  Here  there  is  a  banking  office 
for  every  eight  thousand  three  hundred  of  the  people  of  the  King- 


152  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

dom.  Suppose  these  banking  houses  to  be  each  allotted  to  equal 
areas,  it  would  make  the  radius  of  each  banking  district  but  four 
and  a  half  miles;  or,  if  the  half  of  them  are  located  in  the  cities  and 
principal  towns,  the  distribution  in  the  villages  and  rural  districts 
would  bring  the  most  distant  individual  within  nine  miles  of  the 
money  centre.  These  offices,  however,  are  doubtless  distributed 
with  regard  to  necessity  for  their  service,  governed  by  the  condi 
tions  of  business  which  regard  the  interests  of  the  banks.* 

The  striking  points  in  the  history  of  the  Scotch  banks  are  their 
freedom  from  disturbing  fluctuations  in  the  amount  of  the  currency 
which  they  circulate,  the  immense  amount  of  their  deposits  when 
compared  with  those  under  different  policies  in  other  countries,  and 
the  exemption  they  have  enjoyed  from  those  general  failures  which 
have  visited  England  so  frequently. 

They  allow  interest  on  deposits  only  about  one  per  cent  below  the 
current  rates,  and  they  lend  money  freely  on  bonded  securities :  a 
plan  by  which  the  parties  accommodated  get  their  operating  capital 
in  advance,  instead  of  having  to  wait  until  they  have  the  proceeds 
of  their  enterprise  in  notes,  which  they  must  discount ;  that  is,  it  is 
not  on  values  produced  or  earned,  but  on  those  to  be  earned  by  aid 
of  credit,  that  the  borrower  receives  his  accommodation  from  the 
banks.  Besides  all  these  conveniences  provided  for  the  business 
and  industrious  public,  they  issue  notes  as  low  as  one  pound;  for,  in 
the  whole  constitution  of  the  system,  and  in  all  its  working  pro 
visions,  it  looks  to  the  convenience  and  aid  of  the  common  people. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  in  Scotland  there  is  no  horror  of 
banks;  no  distrust,  and  none  of  that  perpetual  endeavor  after  change 
in  policy  which  agitates  England  and  the  United  States. 

It  is  not  at  all  within  the  scope  of  our  work  to  treat  the  banking 

*  Scotland  has    1  bank  to  every  84  square  miles  of  territory. 
Pennsylvania  1      "  "    232       "  "  " 

New  York         1       "  "    150       «          "  " 

Massachusetts  1      "  "      38       "          "  " 

Rhode  Island  1      "  "      21       "          "  " 

Ohio  1      "  "    296       "          "  " 

The  territories  divided  into  equal  squares  would  give  a  radius  or  half  diameter 
to:— 

Scotland  of  four  and  a  half  miles;  to  Pennsylvania,  seven  and  a  half  miles;  to 
New  York,  six  and  one-eighth  miles  (but  the  rural  banks  would  have  a  radius  of 
seven  miles);  Massachusetts,  three  miles;  Rhode  Island,  two  and  three-tenths 
miles  ;  Ohio,  eight  and  a  half  miles. 


CREDIT    MONEY.  153 

system.  We  notice  these  institutions  only  as  they  are,  or  might  be, 
instruments  of  the  money  function  in  its  bearings  upon  the  general 
welfare.  Any  wider  view  of  the  subject  involving  them,  would 
overtask  our  powers,  and  only  exhaust  the  patience  of  those  to  whom 
this  work  is  specially  addressed. 

One  other  specialty  may  properly  be  noticed  here  :  the  popularity 
of  the  "  greenback"  circulation,  for  many  reasons  which  need  not  be 
mentioned,  inclines  large  numbers  of  those  who  are  concerned,  or, 
who  concern  themselves,  with  the  supposed  advantages  of  national 
banks,  to  recommend  some  modification  of  our  present  currency 
system,  in  such  manner  as  would  make  the  government  the  source  of 
the  supply  of  our  circulating  notes.  This  proposition,  if  we  are  right 
in  our  apprehension  of  the  machinery  and  uses  of  banks,  is  every 
way  objectionable.  There  was  no  fault,  under  the  circumstances 
which  required  the  issue  of  the  government  notes,  and  their  con 
tinuance  in  circulation,  or  in  putting  the  debt  of  the  nation  into  the 
form  of  a  circulating  medium  •  but  the  government  cannot  make  of 
its  exchequer,  or  sub-offices,  depositories  for  the  inactive  money  of 
the  people ;  it  cannot  lend,  as  business  everywhere  requires,  upon 
individual  securities,  or  discount  the  business  paper  afloat.  Two 
thousand  or  three  thousand  banking  houses  would  be  required  for 
the  purpose  of  accommodating  the  localities  with  convenient  places 
of  deposit  and  loans.  The  government  could  not  appoint  and 
supervise  the  administrators  of  such  a  trust.  It  cannot,  and  will  not, 
be  trusted  or  burdened  with  this  business  in  all  its  required  breadth 
and  action.  Corporations  of  the  vicinage  alone  are  competent. 
Their  circulating  paper  can  be  secured  to  the  holders,  absolutely,  as 
is  proved  by  experience  of  the  national  banking  system,  now  some 
years  under  trial;*  and  for  all  other  matters  of  complaint  the  pub- 

*The  national  banking  law,  for  which  we  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Secretary  Chase, 
secures  the  redemption  of  the  circulating  notes  absolutely,  but  leaves  their  conver 
sion  into  coin  dependent  upon  the  general  resumption  of  specie  payments.  The 
government  supplies  the  notes  to  the  sixteen  hundred  banks,  organized  under  the 
law,  in  a  certain  proportion  to  their  several  capitals,  and  upon  the  security  of 
national  bonds,  deposited  in  the  federal  treasury  in  the  ratio  of  one  hundred  dol 
lars  to  every  ninety  dollars  worth  of  such  notes  emitted.  Thus  the  circulation  of 
each  bank  is  limited  to  ninety  per  cent  of  the  securities  pledged  for  its  redemption. 
On  failure  of  the  bank,  the  United  States  Treasury  redeems  them,  if  demanded, 
and  sells  the  pledged  securities  to  reimburse  itself.  The  note  holder  is  made  in 
«very  event  safe  against  any  loss,  for  the  notes  of  a  broken  bank  are.  just  as  good 
11 


151  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

lie  and  the  authorities  must  find  either  complete  relief,  or  such  miti 
gation  as  the  subject  admits  of.  A  government  might  indeed 
provide  paper  circulation,  but  it  cannot  distribute  it  directly  among 
the  people.  It  cannot  be  a  bank  of  deposit,  discount,  and  issue.  If 
it  has  the  wisdom  to  devise,  and  the  authority  to  establish,  the  re 
quired  instrumentalities,  its  powers  and  capabilities  can  go  no 
further  j  and,  as  there  is  nothing  in  the  proper  offices  of  banks 
which  can  be  dispensed  with,  they  must  be  conformed  as  nearly  as 
may  be  to  this  necessity,  and  the  risks  and  injuries  attending  them 
must  be  borne  till  removed  or  abated  as  evils  accompanying  an  in 
dispensable  service  to  society,  which  withal,  leave  behind  a  vast 
balance  of  benefits. 

The  inference  from  all  these  views  seems  both  easy  and  inevita 
ble,  that  banking  cannot  rightly  be  made  a  monopoly,  as  it  is  by 
law  in  the  United  States,  and  by  contract  in  England  and  France ; 
and  in  effect,  by  limitation  of  the  circulation  and  its  arbitrary  dis 
tribution,  as  under  the  national  banking  system  of  the  United 
States,  without  inducing  many  of  the  abuses  complained  of,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  disappointing  the  intention,  perverting  the  action, 
and  crippling  the  agency  of  the  great  money  function,  upon  which 
all  business  prosperity  and  stability  depend. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  experience  of  generations  will  soon 
cure  the  public  of  the  notion  that  the  instant  convertibility  of  the 
circulating  note  is  the  one  thing  to  be  secured,  at  the  expense  of 
whatever  uses  the  banking  system  serves — cured,  if  not  by  a 
sound  view  of  the  general  uses  of  banks,  at  least  by  the  uniform 
failure  of  all  attempts,  contrivances,  and  safety-guards  employed  to 

as  those  of  a  sound  one,  and  the  notes  of  all  the  banks,  wherever  situated,  are  of 
uniform  value  throughout  the  United  States. 

The  grand  fault  of  the  system  is  in  its  restriction  of  the  amount  of  the  circula 
tion  allowed.  As  this  provision  at  first  stood,  the  amount  being  taken,  the  benefits 
of  the  law  are  monopolized.  The  amount  should  be  limited  only  by  the  amount 
of  the  securities  pledged  for  the  redemption  of  the  notes,  and  so  be  practically 
limited  only  by  the  requirements  of  business.  In  other  words,  banking  should  be 
as  free  as  other  businesses  and,  especially,  free  to  all  localities.  With  respect  to 
the  security  of  depositors;  that  is  left,  as  it  should  be,  to  the  care  of  the  depositors 
themselves,  and  they  are  not  permitted  to  affect  the  solvency  of  the  circulating 
notes,  as  under  the  old  state  banking  system  they  so  frequently  did.  Depositors 
have  no  just  claim  for  security  from  the  government.  Theirs  is  a  private  business 
with  the  banks.  For  the  authorized  circulating  money,  the  Government  is  every 
way  responsible,  and  it  is  also  eminently  capable  of  fulfilling  its  trust, 


CREDIT    MONEY.  155 

accomplish  that  one  thing,  endeavored  in  so  many  ways,  at  so 
great  losses  and  catastrophies,  as  have  always  awaited  the  occasion 
for  discrediting  the  attempt. 

The  charter  of  the  Bank  of  England  means  nothing,  and  intends 
nothing  specially,  except  a  desperate  effort,  by  desperate  means,  to 
prevent  a  suspension  of  specie  payments.  It  went  into  this  ser 
vice  in  tho  year  1844,  and,  behold,  the  anti-suspension  provision 
has  been  already  three  times  suspended  by  the  violent  intervention 
of  the  privy  counsel  of  Her  Majesty,  under  the  compulsion  of  the 
very  exigencies  which  it  was  designed  to  prevent  or  overrule.  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  by  and  with  the  advice  of  the  "  sound  currency " 
savans  of  the  realm,  believed  he  was  constructing  a  safety  valve  for 
the  paper-money  medium  of  the  nation ;  yet,  in  the  first  and  every 
subsequent  exigency  that  put  it  into  operation,  it  turned  out  to  be 
a  trap,  that  had  to  be  let  up  and  set  again,  to  serve  again  only  so 
long  as  it  should  be  useless,  and,  therefore,  harmless.  The  fact 
that  the  Scotch  banks  had  gone  safely  and  steadily  through  the 
crisis  of  1793,  and  that  of  1825,  when  so  many  of  the  provincial 
banks  of  England  were  swept  off,  and  not  a  single  Scotch  bank 
gave  way,  and  the  failure  of  all  devices  everywhere,  and  at  all 
times,  to  maintain  the  redemption  on  demand  of  bank  paper,  when 
that  is  made  the  master  idea  of  the  machinery,  might  induce 
theorists  and  financiers  to  look  somewhat  more  deeply  and  broadly 
into  the  general  question.  Convertibility  is  a  convenience,  but  it  is 
not  the  essence  of  the  circulating  note.  Solvency  is  quite  another 
thing,  and  this  secured,  there  is  no  people  under  the  sun  who  will 
not  require  the  note,  even  at  the  depreciation  which  it  suffers 
during  the  suspension  of  specie  payments,  in  preference  to  doing 
without  it.  It  is  probable  that  if  everything  else  in  the  banking 
system  were  well  cared  for,  the  ultimate  solvency  of  the  notes 
secured,  and  the  whole  system  set  free  from  the  restraints  that  are 
imposed  solely  with  the  view  to  keep  the  paper  at  the  par  of  gold 
and  silver,  the  convertibility  would  take  care  of  itself,  or,  at  worst, 
prove  a  matter  of  trivial  importance. 

The  evils  of  a  depreciated  currency,  when  admitted  to  the  full, 
are  as  nothing  to  the  lack  of  a  money  supply  that  keeps  productive 
industry  active  to  the  full.  Creditors  paid  in  it  lose  in  proportion 
to  its  diminished  purchasing  power,  but  the  mischief  stops  there ; 
and,  what  is  the  difference  between  the  normal  and  the  nominal 


156  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

value  of  debts,  to  the  losses  suffered  by  the  interruption,  diminu 
tion,  or  suspension  of  a  nation's  industry  ?  If  half  a  year's  labor 
is  lost  in  the  United  States  for  want  of  active  capital  to  keep  it 
employed,  and  this  is  valued  at  but  half  a  dollar  a  day,  there  is  a 
loss  to  those  who  can  bear  no  loss  without  suffering,  of  three  hun 
dred  and  ninety  millions  by  five  millions  of  people,  and  a  corre 
sponding  loss  to  twenty  or  thirty  other  millions  of  people.  Will  a 
ten,  twenty,  or  thirty  per  cent  decline  in  the  value  of  debts,  to  those 
who  may  be  presumed  able  to  bear  it,  be  a  greater  evil  ?  The  danger 
of  the  arrest  of  production  and  of  trade,  in  England,  has  three 
times  in  twenty  years  driven  merchant,  manufacturer,  and  artisan 
to  pray  government  to  give  them  irredeemable  bank  notes  instead. 
And  the  greenback,  that  does  not  even  promise  to  pay  its  face 
value  on  demand  in  gold  or  silver,  or  in  anything  else  but  taxes 
and  old  debts,  has  won  for  itself,  in  the  loyal  States  of  America, 
an  everlasting  remembrance  in  praise  and  blessings. 

There  is  mystery  in  money,  there  is  magic  in  it.  Abstractly  every 
body  admits  this,  but  in  specialties,  touching  its  movements  and 
effects,  hardly  one  man  in  a  thousand  will  refrain  from  repairing 
the  machine,  though  he  knows  that  the  regulator  and  the  motor 
force  is  to  him  inscrutable. 

If  any  one  doubts  this,  so  broadly  stated,  we  would  suggest  that 
he  tries  his  divining  power  upon  tight  and  easy  money  markets, 
alternating  every  week ;  on  the  premium  on  gold  without  alteration 
in  the  volume  of  the  currency — highest  when  the  national  debt  was 
less  than  half  its  maximum  amount,  and  declining  in  an  inverse 
proportion  to  the  measure  of  the  public  burdens.  Or  why,  with 
out  any  perceptible  change  in  the  securities,  it  sells  at  135,  165,  and 
125  within  two  months  ?  Perhaps  all  these  questions  could  be 
disposed  of  without  being  answered,  if  this  other  question  were 
answered — why  should  gold  gamblers  be  allowed  to  fix  the  standard 
for  measuring  the  value  of  national  notes  at  will  ? 


CHAPTER    XII. 

COMMERCE. 

Commerce:  Faulty  definitions  of  the  term. — Whately,  McCulloch. — Territorial 
division  of  labor. — Production  subordinated  to  trade. — Benefit  of  division  of 
labor  exaggerated. — Glorification  of  trade. — Fundamental  errors  of  English 
Economists;  practical  and  theoretical  mischiefs  resulting. — Idols  of  the  Den. — 
Bias  of  nationality  in  the  philosophy  of  business  affairs. —  Commerce  is  direct 
exchange,  Trade  is  exchange  through  intermediates. — Trade  disintegrates, 
Commerce  develops  the  man  and  the  community. — Monstrous  results  of  the 
Trade  theory. — The  Trader's  policy  of  production. — Rule  of  climatic  law. — 
Trade  law. — Trader's  definition  of  political  economy — Its  true  meaning  and 
scope. — False  claims  of  foreign  trade;  spoliation  its  aim,  in  conformity  with 
the  spirit  of  the  times;  effected  formerly  by  force,  now  by  fraud. — The  motive 
borrows  the  credit  of  the  good  in  the  results. — Association  without  freedom  is 
domination,  not  commerce. — Commerce  is  immediateness  of  intercourse  and 
exchange. — Impediment  of  space. — Home  commerce  might  suffice  in  the  United 
States. — The  policy  of  commerce  is  a  national,  not  a  cosmopolitan  concern. — 
Value  of  imports  before  the  Rebellion ;  value  of  domestic  exports. — Commerce 
of  the  East  and  West  loyal  States  in  1862. — Estimate  of  total  domestic  ex 
changes. — Consumption  of  domestic,  ten  to  one  of  foreign,  products. — Differ 
ence  between  economic,  and  market,  value. — Foreign  goods  displace  home 
labor. — Statistics  of  trade  imperfect — official  figures  unsafe. — Data  and  differ 
ences  of  European  authorities. — United  States  census  reports — their  defects — 
they  afford  only  a  basis  for  approximate  estimates. — Proportional  market  value 
of  foreign  and  domestic  products. — Difference  of  economic  value  in  transporta 
tion  and  trade  profits. — More  than  half  our  imports  give  no  employment  to 
domestic  labor  and  capital  in  further  production. — Economic  value  of  foreign 
imports;  they  give  no  employment  to  domestic  labor  and  capita.l  in  further  pro 
duction. — Economic  value  of  foreign  imports  as  only  one  to  twenty-three  of 
domestic  products. — Kinds  of  foreign  imports  which  exclude  home  industry, 
enumerated. — Their  cost,  fifty-seven  per  cent  of  our  total  imports. — Balance  of 
international  trade — unfavorable  balance,  not  in  the  market  value,  but  in  the 
kinds  of  commodities  exchanged — the  mischiefs. — Difference  in  kinds  and 
values  of  labor  resulting  from  different  kinds  of  imports. — Educating  and 
enriching  labor. — Money  values  not  the  guide  in  international  trade. — Charac 
teristics  of  legitimate  trade. — Sound  international  trade  is  supplementary,  not 
competitive. —  Unrestricted  trade  in  natural  products,  only  across  climates. — 
Cosmopolitan  and  national  economists. — Political  economy  not  a  science,  but  a 
system  of  expediencies — it  has  no  universal  or  permanent  principles — its  scien- 

157 


158  QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY. 

tific  pretensions  everywhere  at  fault. — Competition  the  regulator  of  disorders  in 
the  trader's  school  of  economists — Bastiat. — Trade  in  manufactures  and  works 
of  art. — All  foreign  trade  compulsory — there  is  no  such  thing  as  free  foreign 
trade. 

WE  have  exact  and  exhaustive  definitions  of  the  term  commerce 
in  dictionaries — verbal  definitions ;  and,  in  the  authors  concerned 
with  the  subject  in  its  practical  relations,  moral,  political,  and  eco 
nomical,  much  of  effort  at  logical  exposition  and  elucidation,  but 
withal,  less  certainty  of  meaning  and  availableness  in  use  than 
ought  to  be  secured.  It  is  among  the  terms  of  art,  in  the  system 
or  systems  of  political  economy  of  which  Archbishop  Whately  says  : 
"  hardly  one  of  them  has  any  settled  and  invariable  meaning,  and 
their  ambiguities  are  perpetually  overlooked."  (Elements  of  Logic, 
p.  354.)  That  the  subject  is  not  as  clear  in  the  minds  of  the  au 
thorities  as  one  would  naturally  expect,  is  plainly  intimated  by  the 
care  that  J.  Stuart  Mill  takes  to  settle  the  respective  claims  of 
Bicardo  and  Torrens  to  the  authorship  or  discovery  of  one  of  the 
causes  which  determine  international  exchanges.  The  authorities 
have,  therefore,  been  very  lately  illuminated  upon  that  particular 
point ;  and  their  high  appreciation  of  a  very  small  matter  shows  how 
little  command  of  the  question  they  had  previously  obtained,  and 
suggests,  besides,  that  it  may  not  yet  be  thoroughly  mastered. 

J.  R.  McCulloch  speaks  of  commercial  intercourse  as  beginning 
to  grow  among  men  as  soon  as  individuals  cease  to  supply  themselves 
with  all  the  products  of  labor  required  for  ther  own  consumption. 
He  adds — "  it  is  only  by  exchanging  that  portion  of  the  produce 
raised  by  ourselves  that  exceeds  our  own  consumption  for  portions 
of  the  surplus  raised  by  others,  that  the  division  of  employments 
can  be  introduced,  or  that  different  individuals  can  apply  themselves 
in  preference  to  different  pursuits."  From  this  point  of  departure — 
from  which  he  departs  never  to  return  again — he  passes  instantly 
to  the  consideration  of  foreign  trade,  either  distant  geographically 
or  internationally,  and  is  thenceforth  occupied  exclusively  with  what 
he  terms  the  territorial  division  of  labor,  which  he  says  has  contrib 
uted  more  than  anything  else  to  increase  the  wealth  and  accelerate 
the  civilization  of  mankind.  In  the  division  of  the  topics  treated 
under  the  general  title,  he  gives  the  first  place  in  order  and  rank  to 
the  agents  of  trade — the  mercantile  classes ;  and  the  necessity  for 
the  wholesale  and  the  retail  dealer,  is  pushed  to  its  last  consequence, 


COMMERCE.  159 

in  which  trade  is  the  substance,  and  production  is  only  its  accessory 
or  minister  iu  civilized  life  and  human  progress.  Treating  of  Trade, 
he  is  so  occupied  with  the  advantages  of  distance  in  commerce  that 
he  thinks  "the  territorial  division  of  labor,  if  possible,  even  more 
advantageous  than  its  division  among  individuals,"  and  of  the  bless 
ings  of  the  latter  he  is  so  well  assured,  that  he  assigns  to  it  no  limits 
beyond  which  it  may  be  injurious;  simply  because  the  more  labor 
is  divided  the  more  production  is  increased  and  cheapened,  and  the 
more  subjects  are  supplied  for  trade,  and  the  larger  space  spread 
for  its  extension.  Unconsciously,  it  may  be,  and  all  the  more  irre- 
flectively,  the  writer's  imagination  takes  wing  and  prose  poetry  is 
pressed  into  the  service  of  admiration  of  trade;  and  roads,  canals, 
steam  carriages,  all  navigable  streams,  coast  and  open  ocean  high 
ways,  are  glorified;  and  even  such  centralization  of  industries  as 
conduces  most  to  the  infinitesimal  division  of  handicraft  occupations, 
is  cited  as  elements  of  this  most  beneficent  of  all  human  functions — 
commerce  wholesale  and  retail !  Everything  is  cheapened,  every 
thing  distributed,  everything  is  first  carried  away  from  everybody, 
everything  is  afterwards  brought  back  to  everybody,  and  trade 
grows  prodigiously.  Besides,  trade  gives  competition  all  possible 
influence.  Everybody  is  put  to  working  with  and  against  everybody 
else,  and  the  author  is  right  in  concluding  an  enthusiastic  outburst, 
"all  is  mutual,  reciprocal,  and  dependant,"  if  he  will  only  allow  us 
to  remember  that  the  same  may  be  said  of  a  chain-gang  or  of  a 
bench  of  galley-slaves,  and  to  reflect  a  little  before  we  join  in  his 
exultation.  For  we  cannot  help  interjecting  the  question  :  is  man 
made  for  products  and  trade,  or  are  products  and  trade  made  for 
man  ?  Rightly  answered,  it  may  appear  that  the  most  important 
element  has  here  been  left  out  of  the  question,  or  considered  only 
as  subsidiary  to  things  which  are  properly  subordinate.  If  wealth 
were  understood  to  be  weal,  well-being,  welfare,  instead  of  finding 
in  the  term  nothing  but  vastness  of  capital  accumulated,  the  politi 
cal  economy  of  Great  Britain  would  take  another  character  than  it 
bears,  and  would  lose  that  bias  for  trade,  especially  foreign  trade, 
which  poisons  every  spring  of  thought  in  all  its  favorite  authors, 
politicians,  and  statesmen.  But  it  would  seem  that  there  is  a  men 
tal  infatuation  which,  like  that  of  alcoholic  intoxication,  believes  in 
the  benefit  or  necessity  of  that  stimulation  which  enervates  the  body 
politic.  The  directly  resulting  pauperism,  expatriation,  rebellion, 


160  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

and  all  forms  of  discontent  and  resistance,  teach  nothing  corrective 
to  a  philosophy  which  holds  that  "  man  is  a  drug  and  population  a 
nuisance/'  and  makes  them  so  by  addressing  all  its  working  influ 
ences  to  the  promotion  of  trade  at  the  expense  of  the  human  instru 
ments  which  supply  its  stores  for  the  aggrandisement  of  traffic. 

England,  judged  by  the  workings  of  her  economic  policy,  is  of 
all  countries  in  the  world,  least  capable  of  furnishing  a  theory  of 
political  economy  for  the  guidance  of  any  people  who  would  escape 
the  wretched  practical  results  of  her  system.  Men  are  everywhere 
so  prone  to  worship  the  idols  of  the  den  in  which  they  are  bred  that 
nationality  clings  to  doctrine  in  all  spheres  of  practical  affairs,  and 
the  flavor  of  nativity  hangs  persistently  over  every  dish  they  cook 
for  the  guests  at  their  feasts  of  philosophy.  The  economic  doc 
trines  of  an  island  that  depends  for  its  prosperity  upon  the  industrial 
colonization  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  must  needs  tend  to  the 
required  subservience  of  its  tributaries;  and  no  moral  or  mental 
integrity  of  individuals,  under  such  influences,  will  save  the  propa 
gandists  from  the  vices  of  thought  bred  into  them  tfy  the  business 
system  in  which  they  live  and  move  and  have  their  being. 

If  these  free  thoughts  suggest  to  the  reader  the  names  of  Torrens, 
Ricardo,  McCulloch,  Cobden,  Bright,  and  Mill,  we  can  only  ask  that 
the  process  of  separating  the  good  from  the  evil  be  dispassionately 
performed,  and  the  presumptions  of  fair  reasoning  be  allowed  due 
weight,  until  a  careful  scrutiny  shows  the  truth  or  error  of  this 
exception  to  the  nationality  of  a  cluster  of  honored  names,  which 
it  must  be  admitted,  are  at  least  remarkably  national  in  matters  of 
commercial  policy. 

It  would  be  well  if  distinctive  terms  could  be  employed  for  the 
exchanges  of  services  and  commodities  effected  by  men  immediately 
and  directly,  and  that  other  manner  of  exchange,  made  through 
intermediates,  middle  men,  agents,  or  merchants.  Mr.  Carey  uses 
the  word  commerce  for  the  exchanges  of  services,  products  and 
ideas  by  men  with  their  fellow  men,  in  exclusion  of  all  interme 
diate  agents;  and  employs  the  word  Trade  to  distinguish  exchanges 
made  by  intermediates  for  the  principals — commerce,,  describing  the 
most  direct  interchanges,  trade,  the  more  or  less  indirect.  The  two 
terms  have  hitherto  been  so  constantly  used  interchangeably  that  a 
difference  of  application  and  force  cannot  be  easily  made  familiar. 
And  the  further  difficulty  arises  from  the  customary  use  of  the  word 


COMMERCE.  161 

commerce,  in  application  to  the  more  indirect  trade,  and  the  greater 
distance  between  the  parties,  while  the  better  use  would  be  exactly 
the  reverse. 

The  difference  in  the  respective  consequences  of  the  more,  and 
the  less  direct  exchanges  ought  to  be  kept  clearly  in  view,  and 
must  be,  if  we  would  understand  the  subject  advantageously.  The 
mutuality,  reciprocity,  and  interdependency  of  exchange,  limited  in 
its  aims  to  products  and  trade,  as  its  central  object,  and  driven  to  its 
utmosts,  in  the  confidence  that  the  governing  principle  leads  only  to 
perfection,  and  cannot,  therefore,  be  mischievous,  even  in  its  ex 
tremes — that  is,  when  its  results  are  piled  up  in  forms  of  material 
wealth — will  work  very  differently  from  the  leading  idea  that  all 
discipline  and  development  should  be  directed  to  the  growth  of  in 
dividuality,  as  well  as  to  association,  in  the  societies  of  men.  As 
sociation  could  be  effected  in  the  trader's  meaning  of  the  term,  and 
up  to  the  entire  scope  of  his  purpose,  by  the  process  of  disintegrating 
the  individuals  concerned  in  its  operations,  so  far  as  to  suppress  all 
that  is  common  and  general  in  men,  for  the  purpose  of  enhancing 
the  special  in  each.  The  division-of-labor  doctrine,  while  it  does 
provide  for  the  most  effective  employment  of  the  varied  aptitudes  of 
the  mass  of  laborers,  may  be  pushed,  under  the  governing  idea  of 
productiveness,  to  an  excess  which  would  change  men  into  a  distor 
tion  of  their  physical  powers,  not  unlike  to  monomania  in  mind. 
For  an  example:  a  noble-looking  old  man,  employed  in  one  of  the 
cutlery  factories  of  Sheffield,  has  been  for  forty  years  employed 
exclusively  in  counting  twelve,  during  twelve  hours  of  every  day. 
Doubtless,  the  knives  and  forks  were  the  more  accurately  and 
expeditiously  assorted  in  dozens,  by  this  sort  of  automatic  life  of  the 
man;  but  what  was  the  reflex  effect  upon  the  man  himself?  Trade 
was  promoted,  but  do  heaven  and  earth  depend  upon  trade  ?  The 
man  that  spends  his  life  in  pointing  brass  pins,  will  never  learn, 
because  he  need  not,  and  had  better  not  learn,  even  how  the  head  is 
made  or  put  on.  Such  division  of  labor  drives  him  back  into  the 
single  element  of  the  work  which  is  arbitrarily  apportional  to  each 
among  a  dozen  or  twenty  hands,  and  lo,  a  pin  is  produced ;  and  all 
men  wonder  at  the  miracle.  Every  .second  of  time  is  pin-pricked 
into  infinitesimals,  and  the  multiplication  table  breaks  down  under 
the  prodigious  results ! 

This  process  may  be  pushed  to  the  disintegration  of  the  proper 


162  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

human  nature,  so  as  to  throw  in  turn  every  faculty  out  of  gear,  and 
so,  out  of  use,  until  a  man  is  decomposed,  and  a  pin-pointer  is  pro 
duced  !  This  is  the  trader's  policy  of  production ;  but  he  does  not  stop 
here  in  the  work  of  mincing  the  mutualities  of  men,  dissolving  them 
into  their  ultimate  atoms,  and  classifying  and  organizing  them  by 
the  affinity  of  their  fractions  or  fragments.  He  carries  the  segrega 
tions  forward  from  the  division  of  labor  among  individuals  into  a 
territorial  division  corresponding  to  it.  He  finds  a  hill-side  that  is 
better  for  pasturage  then  for  corn-growing,  and  he  provides  for  its 
exclusive  appropriation  and  employment  according  to  this  one  of  its 
adaptations;  the  people  of  that  hill-side  must  make  beef  and  mutton, 
and  nothing  else,  because  these  are  its  best  spontaneous  products ; 
and  the  men  of  that  division  must  limit  themselves  in  their  pursuits 
and  their  studies  to  that  one  art,  else  they  might  diminish  the 
traffic  arising  from  the  scientific  division  of  labor,  according  to 
territory.  Other  men,  elsewhere,  can  make  blankets  cheaper,  be 
cause  they  have  no  territory  at  all  to  work,  and  everybody  else  must 
abstain  from  their  alloted  specialty  of  labor.  Men  are  nowhere  to 
be  the  masters,  but  everywhere  the  slaves,  of  circumstances,  and  in 
these  unvaried  and  unvariable  conditions  are  found  the  natural 
laws  of  commerce  ! 

If  these  theorists  would  but  limit  the  necessary  territorial  ex 
changes  of  men  to  the  unavoidable ;  if  they  would  but  say  that  the 
north  temperate  zone  must  get  its  spices  and  ivory  from  the 
tropics,  and  the  hot  climates  must  draw  their  ice  from  the  colder, 
and  always  use  the  word  must,  and  say  they  should,  only  because  they 
must,  they  would  have  a  clean  strong  grip  of  a  natural  law;  but 
when  they  bring  upon  us  a  trade  law  which  looks  ever  to  cheapness 
of  commodities,  and  pays  no  regard  whatever  to  the  conditions  of 
human  welfare,  we  must  insist  upon  some  other  meaning  and  purpose 
of  legitimate  commerce. 

Abundant  provision  for  trade  as  a  civilizer,  wealth-producer, 
educator,  and  organize^  of  the  world,  exists  in  the  naturally  necessary 
interchanges  of  products,  without  arbitrarily  dividing  all  the  like 
regions  of  the  earth  into  totally  unlike  pursuits,  and  leaving  it  to 
transportation  to  unite  them  only  in  the  market  places,  while  it 
severs  them  into  distinct  and  different  factors  or  multipliers  every 
where  else.  But  the  very  definition  of  Political  Economy  by  the 
authorities  who  write  in  the  dominant  interest  of  trade,  amounts 


COMMERCE.  163 

to  nothing  more  in  substance  than  that  given  by  Archbishop 
Whately,  catallactics,  or  a  science  of  exchanges,  which  is  very 
far  from  the  idea  that  it  is  concerned  with  man  in  his  efforts 
for  the  maintenance  and  improvement  of  his  conditioner  as  techni 
cally  defined,  "  a  system  of  the  laws  which  govern  man  in  his  efforts 
to  attain  the  highest  individuality,  and  the  greatest  association  with 
his  fellow  men"  (Carey,  Social  Science,  vol.  i.,  p.  63).  It  is 
claimed  for  foreign  trade  that  it  is  a  peacemaker  among  the  nations. 
This  is  not  its  history  in  the  past.  Maritime  trade,  until  within  the 
period  of  two  centuries  last  past,  was  simply  what  we  now  call 
piracy.  Its  occupation  was  pillage  of  chattels,  enslavement  of  men, 
and  extension  of  dominion  in  the  interest,  and  for  the  extension 
of  trade.  The  nobility  and  gentry  of  civilized  Europe  held  any 
form  of  industry  degrading  which  was  not  carried  on  by  murder  and 
robbery.  Sir  Walter  Raliegh  went  abroad  upon  the  high  seas  with 
Elizabeth's  commission  as  a  privateer,  and  John  Newton  served  as 
chaplain  in  a  fleet  of  slave-traders.  The  morals  of  maritime  trade 
were  the  last  to  be  reformed  in  the  means  it  employed  and  the 
policy  it  pursued  in  international  relations.  When  the  age  of 
violence  had  passed,  trade  long  stuck  to  its  purpose,  aim,  and  end. 
Pillage  took  the  name  of  international  commerce,  and  made  its 
predatory  invasions  of  the  feebler  nations  without  force  of  arms,  by 
the  force  of  traffic.  The  superior  arms  of  the  strongest  are  now 
only  occasionally  employed  to  make  way  for  the  superior  skill  of 
hands ;  and  invasion  of  foreign  labor  markets  is  effected  by  pacific 
means  in  lieu  of  the  older  and  ruder  warlike  invasions,  breaking 
down  the  defenses  of  industry  by  other  acts  not  less  effectual  than 
those  which  use  powder  and  bayonets  in  the  negotiation. 

Changing  the  method  with  the  changes  of  the  times,  and  so 
avoiding  conflicts  with  the  spirit  of  the  age  and  the  common  law  of 
nations,  the  leading  commercial  nation  of  the  world  is  getting  rid 
of  her  colonial  dependencies,  and  rapidly  changing  her  foreign 
political  subjects  into  profitable  customers.  After  the  suppression 
of  Napoleon,  for  the  first  time  in  her  history,  she  maintained  a  peace 
of  thirty  years.  An  episode  in  the  Crimea,  and  an  occasional 
insurrection  in  India,  have  merely  thrown  a  few  ripples  into  the 
pacific  current  of  her  foreign  affairs;  for  it  is  settled  that  she  no 
longer  aims  at  the  rank  of  a  first-rate  power,  having  seen  that  the 
policy  of  peace  is  the  true  line  of  conduct  for  the  maintenance  and 


164  QUESTIONS    OP    THE    DAY. 

promotion  of  her  commercial  prosperity.  The  London  Times  struck 
the  key-note  when  it  declared  that  England  lives  in  a  glass  house, 
and  explained  the  figure  of  speech  by  admonishing  her  that  she  can 
not  pull  a  trigger  without  risking  the  loss  of  a  customer.  Peace 
with  her,  means  plenty;  and  trade,  she  calls  commerce,  for  the  hap 
pier  allusions  which  the  terms  can  be  made  to  convey,  and  there 
upon  claims  credit  for  all  the  possible  beneficence  that  may  associate 
itself  with  a  world-wide  trade  intended  primarily  to  make  her  the 
"workshop  of  the  world." 

Voyages  of  discovery  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  as 
well  as  the  crusades  of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth,  claimed  as  their 
purpose,  and  are  still  credited  with,  all  the  incidental  advantages  to 
the  pagan  world  which  Providence  has  educed  from  the  evil  of 
their  motives  and  of  the  means  employed  with  very  different  aims. 

Foreign  commerce  is  thoughtlessly  taken  to  mean  association ; 
and  such  association  to  imply  reciprocity,  mutuality,  aggregate 
helpfulness,  organization,  unity,  brotherhood,  and  all  excellent 
things  in  the  charities  of  art  and  life.  But  association  does  not  of 
itself  secure  any  such  commerce  or  interchange  of  helpfulness.  An 
army  is  an  association  most  effectively  organized  ;  but,  at  what 
expense  to  the  individuals  is  the  effect  of  combination  secured! 
Military  authorities  hold  that  the  nearer  men  in  arms  can  be  re 
duced  to  machines,  the  better  for  discipline  and  for  battle.  Indi 
viduality  is  here  utterly  sacrificed  for  unity;  combination  is  not  the 
free  play  of  the  natural  relations  and  dependencies;  the  mutuality 
is  nothing  but  cohesion,  and  accordingly,  the  bread  of  bondage  is 
rations,  bloodshedding  is  bravery,  and  the  degradation  of  manhood 
must  be  baptized  glory.  Let  us  not  be  deceived  by  words.  Slavery 
may  lurk  in  human  relations  which  do  not  obtrude  the  auction 
block ;  and  combinations  may  be  crushed  masses,  though  made  of 
living  men.  Aggregation  is  not  association.  A  sand  stone  is  only 
a  hardened  mass  of  granulated  deposits,  not  a  vitalized  organism. 
No  union  or  communion  or  interchange  of  men  meets  or  fulfills  the 
purpose  of  human  existence,  or  provides  for  its  well-being,  that  does 
not  give  free  play  to  all  the  faculties  of  each  individual,  and  pro 
mote  their  growth.  In  the  light  of  this  truth,  commerce  has  its 
true  intent  and  meaning. 

Now  let  us  look  at  our  subject  with  eyes  wide  open  to  all  its 
essential  aspects. 


COMMERCE.  165 

Its  central  and  supreme  meaning  is  in  its  directness  and  imrnedi- 
ateness,  which  must  rule  all  our  thoughts  and  all  our  endeavors 
concerning  it.  Correspondence  by  letters  is  an  abridgment  of 
time,  but  the  gain  is  offset  by  the  difference  in  favor  of  personal  in 
tercourse.  Quickened  by  the  electric  telegraph,  it  becomes  instant 
aneous,  but  still  not  personal,  or  in  the  true  sense,  immediate.  The 
tone  and  the  touch,  and  the  sympathetic  adaptation  of  the  parties, 
are  lost,  and  a  message  may  be  an  offense  or  a  failure,  which  a  look 
or  a  gesture  would  relieve  or  remove.  Distance  in  place  is  in  the 
way,  though  that  of  time  be  annihilated.  The  communication  is 
still  indirect.  Mineral  magnetism  is  not  the  equivalent  of  that 
which  is  mental  or  personal.  Steam  and  electricity  are  only  good 
against  time,  they  are  powerless  upon  space.  If  time  were  annihi 
lated  space  would  still  be  as  great  an  impediment  in  itself  as  ever. 
For  all  the  purposes  of  commerce  it  is  space  that  must  be  overcome. 
Neighborhood  in  place  is  its  only  avoidance ;  and,  in  whatsoever 
relative  locality  is  important,  whether  in  the  commerce  of  ideas,  feel 
ings,  or  the  exchanges  of  services  and  their  products,  nearness  is 
the  grand  desideratum.  In  economic  affairs  therefore  we  must  give 
the  first  place  to  the 

COMMERCE    OF    HOME. 

And  first  of  its  magnitude,  its  value,  and  its  necessity  : 

In  such  a  country  as  ours,  or  any  other  as  favorably  situated 
and  as  well  provided  with  materials,  labor,  and  art,  it  would  not  be 
too  much  to  say  that,  for  life  and  its  chief  necessities,  we  have  all 
that  we  need,  and  could,  without  much  detriment  or  diminution  of 
progress,  dispense  with  foreign  trade  altogether. 

National  or  political  boundaries  do  not  correspond  to  geographical 
or  climatic  divisions,  but  commerce  is,  in  one  aspect,  a  national  con 
cern,  and  must  be  so  considered. 

Taking  the  time  before  the  war  of  the  Rebellion  for  the  sake  of 
seeing  the  relative  value  of  home  and  foreign  trade,  undisturbed,  we 
find  the  appraised  value  of  all  our  foreign  imports  and  exports  of 
merchandise,  specie  exports  excluded,  at  the  highest,  fall  short  of 
$652,000,000.  The  consumption  of  foreign  imports  in  the  highest 
year  (1860)  per  head  was  $10.80.  The  value  of  the  domestic  ex 
ports  were  very  exactly  $10  per  head.  What  are  these  amounts  to 
the  value  of  the  domestic  exchanges  of  the  year  ? 


166  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

We  have  no  official  reports  of  the  domestic  trade  of  the  several 
portions  of  the  Union  which  usually  interchange  products  with 
each  other.  The  nearest  approach  to  a  very  partial  estimate  is  that 
published  by  the  Treasury  Department  in  1863,  in  which  the 
transit  trade  of  the  Allegheny  Mountains  and  a  line  corresponding 
to  the  central  ridge  extending  northward  to  the  Canada  border, 
and  southward  no  farther  than  the  Potomac  River,  or  the  northern 
boundary  of  Virginia,  puts  the  value  of  merchandise  transported  in 
the  trade  between  the  Eastern  and  Western  States  in  1862  at  eleven 
hundred  and  thirty-eight  millions.  In  this  calculation  nothing  is 
embraced  but  merchandise  carried  eastward  and  westward  at  least 
three  hundred  miles,  or  only  such  goods  as  were  carried  from  and 
between  the  Atlantic  seaboard  and  the  Mississippi  Valley.  Nothing 
that  was  carried  north  and  south,  between  the  Atlantic  States — 
nothing  exchanged  among  themselves  by  the  Western  and  North 
western  States.  The  usual  inter-state  trade  of  the  Confederate  States, 
south  and  southwest,  and  between  them  and  the  north,  east,  and 
west  of  the  loyal  States,  were,  of  course,  omitted ;  those  Southern 
States  being  at  the  time  at  war  with  the  loyal  Union  States.  This 
eleven  hundred  millions  worth  of  through  transit  in  a  single  direc 
tion  (East  and  West)  is  but  as  the  drop  of  a  bucket  to  the  total 
domestic  exchanges  in  a  time  of  peace  and  active  business. 

We  may  approach  the  total  value  of  the  commodities  exchanged 
at  home  by  the  fact  that  the  products  of  industry  in  the  Union  for 
the  year  1860  were  worth  four  thousand  millions. 

The  imports  for  consumption  of  that  year  were  three  hundred 
and  thirty-five  millions,  or  equal  only  to  one-twelfth  of  the  domes 
tic  products.  Not  all  these  domestic  products,  however,  went  into 
market.  The  producers  may  be  taken  to  have  consumed  one- 
fifth,  yet  most  of  the  goods  thus  consumed,  though  not  sold  for 
money,  were  in  fact  exchanged  for  services  of  families  and  em 
ployees,  especially  in  agriculture,  which  now  employs  nearly  half 
the  laborers  of  the  nation. 

We  are  warranted  in  our  calculation  that  the  domestic  commerce 
is,  in  money  price,  as  ten  to  one  of  the  foreign  articles  consumed  in 
the  country.  We  do  not,  however,  measure  the  economic  value  by 
the  market  prices  of  the  products  of  industry  and  traffic.  Far 
from  it.  In  the  United  States  but  little  raw  material  is  imported — 
but  little  that  affords  the  further  profits  of  converting  skill,  or  em- 


COMMERCE.  167 

ploys  labor  and  capital  in  reproduction.  Nine-tenths  of  the  mer 
chandise  imported  goes  directly  into  consumption.  The  wines  and 
liquors,  the  sugar,  coffee,  tea,  jewelry,  fancy  dry  goods,  like  the 
toys  and  trinkets,  never  take  the  character  of  manufacturing  stock 
or  materials.  And  such  goods  as  iron,  woolens,  and  cottons  rather 
displace  home  labor  than  furnish  it  with  any  form  of  employment. 

The  adepts  in  statistics,  who  occupy  themselves  especially  with 
the  production  and  consumption  of  nations,  and  with  their  accumu 
lations  of  wealth,  labor  and  belabor  their  subject  in  all  possible 
ways,  and  failing  of  such  agreement  in  results  among  themselves  as 
might  commend  their  conclusions  to  the  inexpert  among  their 
readers  and  students,  usually  leave  no  confident  or  definite  convic 
tions  upon  the  common  understanding.  The  difficulty  lies  in  the 
want  of  reliable  data  for  their  calculations.  In  the  matter  of 
foreign  trade  custom-house  reports  approach  the  truth,  when  quanti 
ties  are  given,  nearly  enough  for  the  statistician's  use ;  but  where 
only  values  are  given,  besides  the  fluctuations  in  prices,  which 
make  wide  departures  from  stable  measurements  or  standards, 
frauds  also  greatly  increase  the  errors  of  fact.  So  that  even  among 
the  items  of  official  authorization  there  is  a  damaging  insecurity — 
a  tickly-bender  support  for  the  footsteps  of  inquiry. 

But  in  the  investigation  of  home  production  and  trade  they  are 
all  afloat.  The  European  authorities  who  have,  or  ought  to  have, 
the  best  means  of  information,  are  accustomed  to  make  up  their 
estimates  from  their  tax  registers,  such  as  excise  duties,  incomes, 
probates  of  decedents'  estates,  insurances,  export  values,  invest 
ments  in  stocks,  and  the  like  evidences  or  indications  of  business 
affairs.  The  distances  and  difficulties  which  lie  between  such  data 
as  these,  and  the  results  aimed  at,  it  will  be  perceived  are  very 
great,  and  the  worth  of  the  results,  like  the  processes  by  which 
they  are  obtained,  is  a  matter  of  estimation.  That  they  lack 
assurance  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  the  highest  authorities  are 
very  far  apart.  One  set,  following  Mr.  Gladstone  in  English 
wealth  statistics,  takes  the  income  tax  as  the  best  basis ;  another, 
after  McCulloch,  relies  upon  the  value  of  the  exports  to  foreign 
countries ;  and  a  confused  crowd  of  writers,  such  as  Colquhoun, 
Porter,  and  Levi,  attach  themselves  to  such  other  indicise  as  they 
can  find  among  the  various  signs  of  business  activities.  A  moment's 
reflection  will  show  how  inadequate  and  unsafe  all  these  means  of 


168  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

calculation  must  be.  The  income  tax,  for  instance,  is  always,  and 
in  all  countries,  infamous  for  its  falsehoods  and  frauds;  besides,  if 
it  were  faithful  and  true,  according  to  the  intent  of  the  law,  it 
never  goes  beyond  the  minimum  subject  to  assessments;  as  in 
England,  nothing  below  £100  per  annum,  and  in  the  United  States 
below  $1,000,  is  embraced,  which  in  both  cases  leaves  out  the  mass 
of  the  earnings  of  the  people,  or  at  least  the  earnings  of  the  mass 
of  the  people.  Then  again,  such  a  basis  as  the  value  of  the  exports  to 
foreign  countries,  on  account  of  the  vast  variations  of  actual  prices, 
the  indifference  of  customs  officers  to  the  declared  value  of  goods 
not  charged  with  any  export  duty,  the  customary  under  valua 
tions  of  such  as  are  subject  to  ad  valorem  duties  in  the  ports  to 
which  they  are  consigned,  and  the  multitude  of  other  caprices  and 
tricks  incident  to  trade,  only  affords  at  best  comparative  esti 
mates  of  such  foreign  trade,  and  has  nothing  further  to  do  with 
domestic  production,  and  nothing  at  all  with  the  home  consump 
tion.  Like  thermometers,  they  might  give,  if  they  would,  the  rela 
tive  degrees  of  movement,  but  they  can  show  nothing  as  to  the 
alsolute  quantities  or  forces  on  which  they  rest.  They  have  their 
arbitrary  zero,  freezing,  temperate,  and  boiling  or  bubble  points 
marked  upon  the  mercurical  -indicator,  and  so,  some  guess  may  be 
had  at  the  changes,  but  no  knowledge  is  afforded  of  the  absolute 
condition  of  the  thing  that  is  changed. 

In  the  United  States,  we  have  another  method  which  has  the 
absolute  for  its  object.  Once  in  ten  years  we  have  an  official  valua 
tion  or  appraisement  of  the  accumulations  of  property,  and  of  the 
products  of  the  next  preceding  year;  but  these  assessments  are 
made  in  the  first  instance  by  a  thousand  different  officials,  who  fix 
prices  and  quantities  upon  such  an  immense  variety  of  grounds  that 
the  census  bureau  must  revise  the  returns  by  the  lights  which  its 
chief  officers  can  command.  The  estimates,  averages,  and  guesses 
of  all  these  agents  afford  us  results  which  we  are  not  innocent 
enough  to  believe  in. 

For  a  statement,  in  detail,  of  the  sources  of  error  in  the  decennial 
census  reports,  and  an  estimate  of  their  amount,  the  reader  is  re 
ferred  to  our  fifth  chapter,  (ante,  p.  50). 

Notwithstanding  all  these  errors,  which  are  all  errors  of  defect, 
and  of  large  proportion  to  the  true  values,  we  get  a  fragment  of 
fact,  a  point  or  fraction  of  basis,  from  which  we  can  restore  the 


COMMERCE.  1G9 

parts  that  are  wanting  sufficiently  well  for  some  purposes ;  and 
among  the  rest,  for  the  inquiry  now  in  hand,  a  safe  estimate 
may  be  made  by  taking  care  to  keep  within  clearly  reasonable 
limits. 

Under  these  cautionary  guides,  we  take  four  thousand  millions  of 
dollars  to  be  the  value,  in  first  hands,  of  our  present  annual  pro 
duction  of  commodities.  About  the  half  of  these  are  agricultural 
and  mining  products.  The  half  of  these  last  are  raw  material  for 
our  manufactures.  The  whole  may  be  analyzed  thus:  one  thousand 
millions  worth  of  agricultural  products  go  without  much  further 
change  of  form  into  consumption.  Upon  the  other  thousand  mil 
lions  worth  of  agricultural  and  mining  materials,  labor  and  capital 
are  employed  which  double  their  ultimate  value.  (The  average  value 
of  the  raw  material  of  manufactures  is  given  by  the  census  of  I860 
at  53.26  per  cent  of  the  value  of  the  products.)  This  gives  us  a 
rough  start  of  three  thousand  millions — to  which  we  may  fairly  add 
a  third  for  the  values  of  products  excluded  by  the  minimum  rule  of 
the  census  takers,  and  labor  otherwise  employed  in  production  and 
not  embraced  in  any  census  schedules. 

This  surely  is  safely  within  the  limits  of  our  actual  production  of 
commodities  in  the  year  1860,  which  is  twelve  times  the  value  of 
our  foreign  imports  for  consumption  (4000  -5-  335  —  12),  and  by  a 
sufficient  deduction  for  products  which  were  consumed  by  the  pro 
ducers,  and  which  did  not  go  into  exchange  in  any  way,  the  account 
^stands  of  domestic  trade  as  ten  to  one  in  market  price. 

But  be  it  remembered,  by  no  means  the  same  in  economic  value, 
this  market  price  in  first  hands,  taken  for  comparison  of  the 
respective  values  of  foreign  and  domestic  products  in  our  exchanges, 
leaves  out  of  consideration,  or  as  proportiouably  equal,  the  transpor 
tation  of  both,*  and  the  occupation  of  merchants  and  profits  of 

*  The  exports  of  the  United  States  to  manufacturing  countries  in  the  fiscal  year 
1868-9,  gold  and  silver  exceptcd,  were  of  the  value  of  $250,000,000.  At  $125  per 
ton,  this  would  give  two  millions  of  tons,  but  not  the  half  of  this  quantity  ever 
touched  a  railroad  or  canal  on  the  way  to  the  sea  ports.  The  return  merchandise 
did  not  reach  the  amount  of  seven  hundred  thousand  tons,  and  of  this  amount  not 
more  than  four  or  five  hundred  thousand  tons  came  from  the  looms,  workshops, 
and  iron  mills  of  Europe — thus  one  and  a  half  millions  of  tons  weight  of  transpor 
tation  upon  our  canals  and  railroads  is  enough  to  allow  for  the  year's  foreign 
trade.  But  their  total  traffic  amounted  to  sixty  five  million  tons,  and  of  this  thy 
foreign  was  certainly  not  more  than  two  per  cent. 
12 


170  QUESTIONS    OP   THE   DAY. 

trade,  all  of  which  are  manifestly  unjust  to  the  trade  in  domestic  com 
modities,  for  in  the  number  of  removals  and  of  sales,  and  in  the 
amount  of  employment  afforded  by  the  primitive  forms  of  things, 
before  they  reach  their  ultimate  marketable  state,  or  are  ready  for 
consumption,  there  is  a  vast  difference.  All  these  changes  and  ex 
changes,  with  all  their  accompanying  profits,  have  passed  upon  the 
foreign  goods  before  they  enter  our  market,  and  they  here  go 
through  none  of  the  stages  of  conversion  for  use  prior  to  the  point 
at  which  they  become  the  sole  subject  of  the  trader  in  finished 
commodities. 

Recollecting  this  difference  against  the  economic  value  of  foreign 
imports  generally,  as  they  appear  in.  the  markets  of  the  United 
States,  let  us  approximately  ascertain  their  status  in  this  respect. 

An  examination  of  the  imports  of  1860  shows  that  fifty-seven 
and  one-half  per  cent  of  their  value  was  in  manufactured  goods, 
ready  for  distribution  to  consumers,  and  only  forty-two  and  one-half 
per  cent  in  commodities  of  the  kinds  which  are  not  native  to  our 
own  climate,  such  as  spices,  dye-stuffs,  tropical  fruits,  coffee,  tea, 
tropical  woods,  medicines,  gums,  grasses,  and  wool  coarser  than  we 
grow  at  home.  These  were  either  materials  for  further  conversion, 
or  supplementary  to  our  own  natural  supplies,  and  thus  indispens 
able  and  legitimate  subjects  of  international  trade. 

Our  foreign  import  trade,  therefore,  which  was  clearly  legitimate 
and  every  way  unexceptionable,  amounted  in  value  to  only  one 
hundred  and  forty-two  millions,  exclusive  of  specie,  which  was  as  one 
to  twenty-three  and  one-half  of  the  value  of  our  domestic  products 
exchanged  (3,350  m.  -•-  142 \  =  23£).  This  latter  amount  is  all 
that  we  can  logically  set  to  the  credit  of  our  foreign  import  trade, 
considered  in  its  economic  value  to  us.  These  goods  came  to  us 
from  countries  differing  in  climate,  soil,  and  industrial  products 
from  our  own.  They  came  not  manufactured  further  than  their 
preservation  and  transportation  required.  They  supplemented  our 
resources  and  ministered  to  our  industries. 

But  the  British  and  French  dominions  in  Europe,  with  Ger 
many,  Holland,  Belgium,  Hamburg,  and  Bremen,  sent  us  goods  on 
which  the  last  touches  of  converting  skill  had  already  been  ap- 

Three  hundred  thousand  immigrants  were  worth  more  to  the  transportation  lines. 
So  much  more  valuable  to  the  internal  improvement  interests  of  the  country  are 
live  men,  than  foreign  commodities. 


COMMERCE.  171 

plied.  'They  were  ready,  ,not  for  reproduction',  but  finished  for 
consumption,  and  entered  into  our  account,  not  as  stock,  but  as 
expenses,  to  the  amount  of  $193,000,000.  They  consisted  of  such 
articles  as  these :  acids,  bleaching  powders,  clocks  and  watches, 
clothing,  coal,  dolls  and  toys,  dressed  furs,  hats  and  bonnets,  iron, 
steel,  laces  and  embroideries,  lead,  gloves,  tanned  and  dressed 
skins,  sole  and  upper  leather,  linseed,  essential  oils,  paints,  paper, 
printed  books,  salt,  silk  piece-goods  and  hosiery,  soda,  brandy, 
spirits,  wines,  chinaware,  and  manufactures  of  cotton,  wool,  worsted, 
flax,  glass,  gold,  silver,  hemp,  iron  and  steel,  lead,  leather,  paper, 
wood,  and  zinc.  In  this  list  there  are  no  articles  which  were  not 
of  the  value  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  dollars.  The  omitted 
articles  of  less  annual  value  are  like  those  that  are  given — all  alike 
of  that  character  which  were  luxuries  or  fancy  goods,  or  such  as, . 
while  actually  of  prime  necessity,  were  yet  of  a  kind  which  home 
labor  and  native  materials  would  have  afforded  us,  and  jsvhich,  as 
imports,  could  have  been  dispensed  with ;  and  they  were  liable  to 
the  further  and  chief  objection  that,  in  the  forms  imported,  they 
displaced  an  equivalent  value  of  our  labor  and  capital,  and  actually 
to  such  extent  enforced  an  idleness  of  industry  and  enterprise 
injurious  far  beyond  the  cost  or  the  cash  disbursed  in  their 
purchase. 

People  talk  of  balances  in  international  trade,  which  they  find 
in  the  footings  of  import  and  export  values ;  and  they  express  the 
difference  in  dollars,  or  francs,  or  pounds  sterling.  This  is  a  sheer 
misunderstanding  of  the  subject.  There  is  and  can  be  no  such 
balances  in  money  values  between  the  exports  and  imports  of  a 
nation's  trade,  further  than  the  temporary  differences  in  the  trading 
merchants'  accounts,  which  is  nothing  to  the  purpose  for  which  it 
is  usually  cited.  But  there  is  a  balance  of  trade  not  seen  in  im 
porting  merchants  accounts  current,  no  matter  how  they  stand  with 
their  foreign  correspondents — a  balance  of  vast  importance  to  the 
parties  respectively — a  balance  which  nothing  in  book  credits  or 
debits  can  settle — a  balance  that  tells  long  after  the  book  accounts 
are  all  evenly  closed.  It  is  a  balance  in  the  kind  of  trade,  the  kind 
of  exchanges,  which  is  not  in  its  nature  measurable  by  money 
values.  A  trade  which  inflicts  a  difference  in  the  productive 
power  of  a  people — which  takes  from  them  their  self-supporting 
labor,  and  aggravates  the  mischief  of  industrial  dependency  by  all 


172  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

the  moral  and  social  evil  of  feebleness,  ignorance,  and  paralysis  in 
the  industrial  interests  of  the  community — this  is  a  balance  to  be 
deeply  considered  and  vigilantly  avoided. 

There  is  a  kind  of  labor  that  requires  and  employs  but  little 
skill;  -which  employs  and  educates  none  but  the  lowest  physical 
powers  of  the  laborer,  and  repays  nothing  beyond  the  means  of  a 
mere  animal  subsistence — a  labor  of  slaves,  and  sure  to  enslave 
whoever  is  doomed  to  it.  There  are  other  styles  and  kinds  of  labor 
whose  products  are  the  necessities  and  enjoyments  of  the  proper 
human  life,  which,  in  their  several  grades,  rising  to  the  highest 
known  in  the  most  advanced  societies,  employ  and  educate  the 
better  and  best  and  noblest  of  the  human  faculties,  and  repay,  in 
their  rewards,  a  duly-proportioned  wealth  to  those  who  command 
and  secure  them. 

There  is  evidently  in  the  progress  of  things — in  the  order  of 
Providence,  working  for  the  deliverance  of  men  from  the  bondage 
of  animalism,  and  from  its  limitations  in  resources  and  enjoy 
ments — a  constant  endeavor  to  substitute  the  insensate  forces  of 
nature  for  the  drudgery  of  human  beings,  and  to  remit  them  by 
the  route,  and  through  the  regenerating  power  of  education,  from 
one  degree  of  skilled  industry  to  another  and  a  higher,  until 
emancipation  shall  be  complete — till  toil  shall  no  longer  fail  of  its 
best  ends,  or  absorb  any  more  of  the  life  than  is  consistent  with, 
and  promotive  of,  the  highest  style  of  life  of  which  man  is  capable 
on  earth. 

Money  values  are  not  the  guides  or  governors  in  this  policy  of 
industry,  and  the  loss  or  gain  of  trade  measured  by  the  footings  of 
mercantile  accounts,  decides  nothing  of  any  moment  in  the  ques 
tion  of  welfare  which  tests  the  real  loss  or  gain  in  all  labor  and 
trade. 

The  world  cannot  afford  more  than  an  ox's  wages  for  an  ox's 
work,  or  more  than  a  slave's  subsistence  for  his  toil,  which  has  no 
higher  aim  for  him  than  his  mere  subsistence;  but  the  world  can 
afford  to  pay  for,  and  finds  its  highest  interest  in  employing  and  re 
warding,  the  nobler  ingredients  in  the  work  of  production,  which 
the  mind  and  morals  of  the  laborer  offer  in  the  market. 

All  this  difference  lies  between  skilled  and  unskilled  industry. 
And  in  all  the  difference  between  the  highest  and  lowest  styles  of 
men,  and  between  every  degree  in  the  long  scale  that  divides  them, 


COMMERCE.  173 

there  is  a  choice  that  concerns  all  forms  and  degrees  of  prosperity 
to  an  individual  and  to  a  people. 

An  international  trade  that  favors  the  development  of  a  nation 
in  power,  rank,  and  knowledge,  takes  for  itself  the  character  of  a 
natural  exchange,  and  brings  along  with  it  all  the  blessings  that 
philosophers  demonstrate,  statesmen  strive  for,  and  orators  and 
poets  glorify,  in  what  they  call  commerce. 

But  foreign  trade  has  another  side  or  aspect,  and  that  is  the  one 
chiefly  insisted  upon  by  the  cosmopolitans  of  Political  Economy : 
it  opens  markets  for  domestic  production,  widens  and  enlarges  it, 
they  say,  and  besides,  in  effect,  makes  a  universal  fair  of  exchanges 
for  all  varieties  of  commodities;  barters  surpluses  in  supply  of 
deficiencies;  levels  the  hills  and  lifts  the  valleys  of  industrial  facili 
ties  ;  interchanges  the  superiorities  of  all  parties,  and  gives  each 
the  advantage  of  his  own,  and  participation  in  that  of  every  other ; 
serving  the  aggregate  man  of  all  nations  as  the  hand  helps  the  foot, 
and  the  eye  supplements  the  ear,  in  the  individual  organism. 

Very  well :  so  far  as  international  trade  does  this,  and  does  no 
mischief  besides,  it  is  just  the  legitimate  commerce  which  reason 
and  policy  commend  and  necessity  itself  commands.  But  is  it  not 
plain  that  all  these  beneficent  reciprocities  absolutely  imply  at  once 
needful  and  helpful  differences  between  the  parties  engaged  in  such 
commerce  ?  The  very  terms  of  the  proposition  confine  its  claims  to 
exchanges  of  differences,  lleduced  to  its  directest  logical  form, 
trade  between  distant  regions  means  supplementary  supplies,  not 
competitive  traffic.  It  means  the  harmony  of  varieties,  not  the 
domination  of  advantages.  It  means,  if  not  equal,  at  least,  common 
benefits,  in  which  each  party  finds  his  own  interests  promoted,  with 
no  kind  of  loss  or  damage  incurred. 

Such  trade  is  conditioned,  not  unconditional.  It  must  be  held  in 
keeping  with  its  proper  object.  The  broadest  and  most  unvarying 
condition  is  the  necessity  of  importing  whatever  cannot  be  produced 
on  the  spot ;  in  other  words,  with  respect  to  natural  products  the 
temperate  zones  must  bring  the  exclusive  products  of  the  torrid  and 
frigid  zones  from  the  climates  and  soils  which  yield  them,  if  they 
would  have  them.  We  must  get  our  finer  furs  from  the  north  and 
our  spices  from  the  south ;  therefore,  international  trade,  in  the  first 
place  must  be  across  climates,  as  to  the  natural  products  of  the 
earth.  Under  this  limitation,  and  to  this  extent,  trade  is  supple- 


174  QUESTIONS    OF    THE   DAY. 

mentary,  indispensable,  unchangeable,  and  always  free  from  intrusive 
competition. 

Here  there  is  no  dispute  about  its  propriety,  or  its  benefits. 

But  there  are  artificial  products  of  labor  and  skill,  which  are  not 
marked  by  this  distinction  of  character,  under  natural  law.  And 
here  lies  the  debatable  ground,  in  which  the  theorists  who  set  no 
limit  to  trade,  under  their  system  of  cosmopolitanism,  differ  world 
wide  from  those  who  hold  the  very  different  doctrine  that  Political 
Economy  is  a  theory  of  productive  power,  and  that  its  dogmas  are 
not  universal  and  unconditional,  but  subject  to  conditions  and 
necessary  adaptations  to  the  exigencies  of  nations;  or,  in  other  words, 
that,  a  true  practical  economy  is  national  as  opposed  to  universal. 
These  latter  of  course  hold,  or,  consistently,  should  hold  that  Political 
Economy  is  not  properly  a  science,  but  a  remedial  and  directory 
system  of  policy,  or  expediency,  variable  with  the  varieties  of  the 
cases  and  conditions  to  which  it  applies. 

That  it  is  not  a  science,  as  chemistry,  music,  physics,  or  astronomy, 
are  sciences,  is  obvious  enough,  when  we  call  upon  its  professors  for 
first  principles  that  would  command  universal  assent — when  we 
consult  them  for  details  of  doctrine ;  when  we  try  their  dogmas  by 
history,  or  by  prophesy,  or,  when  we  ask  them  for  a  demonstrated 
doctrine  of  civil  government  in  respect  to  their  department  of 
inquiry;  for  a  system  of  currency;  of  taxation;  of  education  ;  for  a 
law  distributing  the  products  of  industry  between  capital,  skill,  and 
labor;  for  a  philosophy  of  public  benevolences,  or,  for  any  principles 
in  any  way  or  degree  regulative  of  industrial  relations,  or  of  rent, 
interest,  profits,  pauperism,  internal  improvements,  distribution  of 
productive  functions,  regulation  of  commodity  exchanges,  or  for 
any  practical  workings  of  the  world's  necessary  business. 

Would  anything  surprise  or  disgust  the  adepts  of  this  so-called 
science  more  than  to  ask  them  for  a  formula  for  the  distribution  of 
the  products  of  industry  between  the  capitalist  who  supplies  the 
money,  the  skilled  artisan  who  invents  or  directs  the  machinery, 
and  the  drudge  who  supplies  the  muscular  power  of  their  joint 
enterprise  ?  His  system  of  words  and  disputes  leaves  all  such  mat 
ters  to  settle  themselves.  The  favorite  avoidance  of  such  a  test  is 
to  parade  the  impracticableness  of  his  principles,  as  a  first  principle 
of  his  science!  He  tells  you  that  the  law  of  competition  (as  if 
competition  were  not  in  itself  the  veriest  lawlessness)  will  take 


COMMERCE.  175 

care  of  the  rewards  of  capital,  skill  and  labor — that,  in  effect, 
strife,  to  the  exhaustion  of  the  strivers,  is  the  way  to  harmony  and 
happiness,  or  that  chaos,  without  the  creative  word  of  control, 
must  ferment  itself  into  orderly  form. 

Thomas  Jefferson  said  that  a  pure  and  simple  democracy  is  the 
devil's  own  government.  To  this  pure  democracy  in  government, 
without  constitutional  law,  without  order,  rank,  or  distribution,  and 
limitation  of  functions,  pure  and  free  competition,  in  industry  and 
trade,  exactly  corresponds ;  and,  accordingly,  the  last  best  authority 
among  the  French  economists  of  the  trader's  school,  declares  that, 
u  if  we  consider  the  great  object  of  all  labor,  the  universal  good, 
in  a  word,  consumption,  we  cannot  fail  to  find  that  Competition  is 
to  the  moral  world  what  the  law  of  equilibrium  is  to  the  material 
one/7 — Frederick  jBastiat,  Sophisms  of  Protection,  chap.  iv. 

Setting  aside,  then,  those  natural  and  necessary  exchanges  which 
the  laws  of  soil  and  sunshine  compel,  let  us  examine  the  principles 
and  policy  which  should  rule  in  the  trade  which  has  artificial 
objects  for  its  subjects.  These,  under  certain  modifications,  may  be 
produced  anywhere  and  everywhere;  and  the  practical  question 
arises  as  to  them,  under  what  circumstances  should  their  production 
be  limited  to  any  one  region  in  preference  to  another,  and  where, 
when,  and  why  should  the  peculiar  advantage  of  their  manufacture 
be  neglected  by  one  people  and  enjoyed  by  another  ? 

The  best  general  answer  to  these  questions  is,  that  such  division 
should  obtain  just  where  it  must,  and  only  when  it  must,  and  so 
long  as  it  must,  of  necessity,  be  so ;  which  brings  us  to  the  still 
broader  declaration  that  foreign  trade  is  rightfully  a  matter  of 
compulsion,  and  never  of  absolutely  free  choice. 

This  is  the  law  of  interchange  under  climatic  necessities.  Why 
not  also  the  law  under  circumstances  which  equally  allow  and 
enforce  it?  liightly  speaking,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  free 
foreign  trade,  except  as  lawlessness  gets  the  name  of  freedom,  or  as 
men  are  free  to  violate  law. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

TRADE   BETWEEN    NATIONS   IN    DIVERSE    GEOGRAPHIC    AND 
ECONOMIC    CONDITIONS. 

Systems  merely  remedial  must  vary  with  all  changes  of  their  subjects. — Political 
Economy  limited  to  national  interests. — A  logic-built  system  suited  only  to 
conditions  in  which  no  system  at  all  is  needed. — The  let-alone  theory  in  place 
there. — Where  there  is  anything  at  risk,  or  any  choice  of  policy,  self-defense 
and  self-direction  are  demanded. — "Free  Trade"  allowed  while  it  favors  growth, 
but  forbidden  when  it  restricts  home  industry. — Exchange  values  may  rule 
consumption,  but  may  not  ruin  productive  industry. — Prosperity,  not  prices, 
rightfully  governs  policy. — Conditions  which  require  foreign  trade. — A  warring 
trade  requires  a  philosophy  of  conquest. — The  British  system  in  history. — Our 
exports  in  1860 — kinds — one-eighth  of  manufactures,  seven-eighths  raw  com 
modities. — Two  classes  of  American  agriculturists  broadly  distinguished. — Our 
farmers  export  but  two  per  cent  of  their  products — our  planters,  seventy-five 
per  cent  of  theirs. — Cotton  looks  to  foreign  trade,  and  not  to  the  interest  of  the 
laborers  or  of  any  other  national  industry. — Cotton  has  no  patriotism — 
always  a  rebel. — Husbandry  loyal  to  all  other  industries. — An  additional  half 
million  of  people  at  home  would  consume  all  our  foreign  exports. — These 
exports  always  of-  the  coarsest  and  least  profitable  kinds  of  our  products. — 
Superiority  of  the  homo  market. — Consuming  cost  of  transportation. — The  cry 
for  immigrants  means  the  want  of  a  near  and  constant  market. — Rivalry  in 
our  foreign  market  for  breadstufFs. — British  islands  our  only  European  market 
for  breadstufFs  and  provisions. — Great  and  rapid  changes  in  the  European 
demand. — Our  share  in  England's  supplies. — Ruinous  fluctuations  in  prices. — 
Home  consumption  of  wheat. — England  takes  one  peck  per  head ;  we  consume 
five  bushels. — Aggregate  of  exports  to  all  Europe. — Exports  of  tobacco. — Only 
thirty-six  per  cent  of  our  farmers' exports  go  to  Europe;  sixty-four  per  cent 
to  non-manufacturing  countries. — Importance  of  the  whither  and  the  what  we 
export. — The  natural  drift  plainly  indicated. — Uncertainty,  insignificance,  and 
unprofitableness  of  the  market  commended  to  us  by  the  trader  theory. — The 
larger  quantities  are  always  at  the  lower  prices. — lleflex  effect  of  foreign  upon 
home  prices. — General  Jackson  on  diversification  of  American  industries  and 
on  foreign  markets  for  our  products. — General  Grant's  concurrence  after  a 
lapse  of  forty  years. — Extended  domestic  manufactures  would  dispense  with 
the  worthless  foreign  demand. 

TAKING  the  ground  that,  a  system  of  economy  for  the  direction 
of  a  nation's  business  cannot  be  uniform  or  universal  in  its  provi- 
176 


177 

sions — that,  it  is  only  remedial  and  directory  in  its  nature,  like 
medicine  and  civil  government,  or  anything  else  that  has  disorder 
to  deal  with,  and  changefulness  in  the  character  of  its  subjects  and 
objects — that,  it  must  be  guided  by  expediency — that,  its  most  gen 
eral  principles  must  be  accommodated  to  exigences,  and  that,  there 
fore,  it  must  necessarily  accept  the  presently  practicable,  as  it  stag 
gers  on  through  expediencies  toward  the  far-off  absolute;  and,  that, 
its  very  best  and  wisest  rules  wear  out  in  the  work  which  they  direct; 
we,  of  course,  expect  that  in  every  difference  of  conditions  ainoug 
different  peoples,  and,  at  every  step  of  progress  in  the  onward  march 
of  the  same  people,  a  different  measure  and  movement  must  be  taken ; 
changing  with  all  changes  of  economic  and  social  conditions,  and 
constant  only  in  the  effort  of  adaptation. 

Surely,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that,  a  system  of  national  econ 
omy  is  properly  concerned  with  its  own  concerns;  and  that  it  must 
take  care  of  itself,  if  for  no  other  reason,  because  no  other  nation 
will  or  can.  Accordingly,  there  can  be  no  universal  system  for  the 
government  of  the  economic  concerns  of  all  the  vast  varieties  of 
nations. 

There  are  now  existing  in  the  world  tribes  of  men  in  the  savage 
state;  others  in  the  pastoral;  others  purely  agricultural;  others 
mixed  agricultural  and  manufacturing ;  arid  others  who  are  agricul 
tural,  manufacturing,  and  commercial;  and  all  these  are  yet  further 
varied  by  their  respective  degrees  of  advancement  in  each  of  these 
classes.  Moreover,  some  of  them  occupy  the  frigid,  some  the  tor 
rid,  and  some  the  temperate  zones;  with  their  capabilities  and  their 
destinies,  either  inflexibly  fixed,  or  greatly  influenced,  by  climatic 
laws.  Nor  are  national  differences  of  character  to  be  overlooked. 
They  are  not  all  equally  capable  of  everything,  nor  of  the  same 
things.  The  races  of  men  cannot  be  treated  as  homogeneous  and 
equal  in  all  things  with  which  economic  systems  are  concerned. 
Nay,  the  very  same  people,  if  favorably  situated,  in  a  temperate 
climate,  with  a  sufficient  extent  of  country,  and  variety  of  industrial 
agencies  and  resources,  must,  in  the  progress  of  growth,  pass  through 
all  the  stages,  from  the  simplest  agriculture  up  to  the  most  perfect 
and  complete  diversification  of  productive  industry  and  iuternationa. 
trade. 

Now,  no  code  of  doctrinal  or  practical  economy  can  be  true  for 
all  differences  of  condition  in  which  communities  of  men  are  actually 


178  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

found;  and  no  system  will  apply  to  the  same  people  in  circumstances 
materially  changed. 

Within  the  Arctic  circle  and  between  the  Tropics,  there  is  such 
constancy  of  conditions  imposed  by  climate  and  soil ;  such  fixed  and 
narrow  limits  of  industrial  enterprise,  and,  withal,  their  inhabitants 
are  so  far  removed  from  the  class  of  progressive  nations — they  have  so 
little  possibility  of  growth  and  its  incident  changes  in  themselves 
under  the  present  rule  of  the  world's  affairs — that  they  can  have  a 
logical  law  of  industrial  life — a  permanent  political  economy,  simply, 
because  they  need  no  theoretical  system  at  all.  A  people  that  cannot 
diversify  their  industry,  or  increase  its  effectiveness,  depend  upon, 
and  are  confined  to,  a  natural  monopoly  of  their  special  products ; 
and  that  condition  of  things  takes  the  government  of  their  affairs 
out  of  their  hands.  They  are  helpless ;  and  the  system  of  political 
economy  which  prescribes  nothing  but  competition,  and  denies  and 
refuses  all  helpfulness,  is  exactly  the  doctrine  for  them.  Their  fate 
and  fortunes  are  at  the  disposal  of  the  governing  nations  around 
them;  their  dependence  upon  foreign  trade  and  foreign  influence  is 
absolute,  for  all  that  is  possible  above  the  savage  for  them.  This, 
by  the  way,  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  let-alone  philosophy. 
But  nations  occupying  the  temperate  regions,  well  provided  for  pro 
gress,  and  with  a  future  before  them,  have  their  fate  and  fortunes 
to  make  or  mar  by  their  own  management.  They  are  in  necessary 
rivalry  with  the  whole  historic  belt  of  the  earth's  surface.  They 
are  exposed  to  military  conquest,  to  political  domination,  and  to  in 
dustrial  vassalage  to  their  competitors,  of  equal  powers  and  similar 
ambitions  and  aspirations  as  their  own ;  and  it  is  their  right,  as  it  is 
their  duty,  sanctioned  by  every  principle  of  natural  morality  and 
international  law,  to  regulate  their  domestic  concerns,  and  manage 
them  in  their  own  way,  for  their  own  benefit. 

An  agricultural  people,  at  a  very  early  stage,  will  profit  greatly  by 
unrestricted  trade  with  a  manufacturing  people.  But  this  rule  holds 
not  a  moment  longer,  nor  a  step  farther,  than  such  trade  ministers 
best  to  their  own  growth  in  all  things  that  make  the  well-being  of 
a  people;  which  may  be  stated,  to  our  purpose,  thus:  Commerce 
with  superiors  is  a  benefit,  even  a  necessity,  up  to  that  point  where 
it  begins  to  repress  advancement  of  the  inferiors,  and  then  it  must 
be  restricted  or  ended. 

Legitimate  trade  is  reciprocity,  qot  dependence  and  domination,. 


THE  FARMERS'  QUESTION.  179 

In  nature  and  reason  it  is  only  supplementary  to  domestic  produc 
tion.  Its  broad  highway  is  north  and  south,  across  climates,  not 
along  them  east  and  west.  For  the  rest — the  accidental,  the  tempo 
rary,  and  circumstantially  unavoidable — it  is  the  mutual  supply  of 
the  things  in  which  the  respective  parties  are  necessarily  deficient, 
or  of  which  they  are  at  the  time  incapable.  So  long  only  as  they 
are  incapable,  any  people  may  properly  and  profitably  exchange 
their  coarser  labor  in  the  form  of  raw  materials  and  provisions  with 
foreign  manufacturers,  or,  until  their  own  labor  and  capital  can  pro 
duce  them;  that  is,  exchange  values  may  rule  a  nation's  policy  of 
trade  while  such  trade  promotes  productive  power  and  general  pros 
perity.  When  trade  begins  to  cripple  production  in  kinds,  qualities, 
or  value,  it  must  be  subordinated.  All  of  which  means  that  man, 
not  prices,  is  the  proper  object  and  ruling  consideration  in  commerce. 
Being  compelled  to  dispose  of  theoretical  dogmas  which  confront  us 
with  an  authority  that  is  held  to  be  respectable,  and  is  known  to  be 
influential,  we  return  from  an  enforced  digression  to  examine  that 
aspect  of  foreign  trade  which  lays  its  claim  to  the  advantages  which 
it  affords  to  domestic  industry  by  giving  it  an  extension  of  its  mar 
kets.  There  can  be  no  question  of  its  claims  in  this  respect  in  a 
country  like  England — a  country  which  depends  in  an  important 
degree  for  its  food  upon  others  having  more  abundant  and  cheaper 
agricultural  products.  Such  trade  is  a  necessity  of  their  industrial 
system.  An  island  that  may  be  covered  with  a  thimble  on  any  good- 
sized  map  of  the  world,  determined  to  make  itself  mistress  of  the 
seas,  supreme  in  the  maritime  carrying  trade,  and  at  the  same  time 
"  the  workshop  of  the  world,"  must  have  a  philosophy  to  fit  its  am 
bition  ;  and  needs  to  have  its  system  accepted  by  its  tributaries.  It 
needs  a  foreign  system  of  cheap  labor  to  sustain  its  own  of  higher 
rewards ;  and  it  needs  to  have  a  supporting  and  conforming  policy 
to  keep  up  the  required  drainage  of  the  pauperism  which  results 
from  its  struggle  to  underwork  its  customer  nations.  To  these  ends 
its  civil  government  has,  for  two  centuries,  bent  all  its  energies;  and 
now,  for  about  a  hundred  years,  it  has  been  indoctrinating  the  out 
side  world  of  barbarians  with  a  philosophy  exactly  corresponding  to 
its  own  governing  policy.  Favorably  situated  for  merchandising,  it 
pushes  trade  one  while  by  force  of  arms,  at  another  by  colonization, 
and  always,  by  the  rivalries  of  production,  pressed  to  their  utmost 
possibilities,  regardless  of  consequences  at  home  and  abroad;  and 


180  QUESTIONS    OP    THE   DAY. 

along  with  these  forms  of  force,  carries  on  an  effective  system  of 
proselytism  which  intends  submission  of  opinion  to  their  policy  of 
industrial  domination — an  instance  of  political  economy  being  in 
fact  national,  in  purpose  and  service,  and  not  a  whit  the  less  so  for 
its  disguise  of  universality.  But  how  does  this  British  system  suit 
its  industrial  tributaries  ?  How  has  it  suited,  in  time  past,  its  col 
onies  in  America — how  has  it  suited  Portugal,  Turkey,  Ireland, 
and  the  East  Indies? 

We  cannot  and  need  not  enter  into  this  history.  Let  us  see  how 
it  stands  in  relation  to  the  United  States  in  existing  circumstances. 
We  take  the  fiscal  year  1860  (ending  June  30th),  as  in  our  previous 
data,  for  the  reasons,  that  it  was  the  year  of  our  greatest  foreign 
trade  up  to  that  date — exceeding  the  average  of  the  previous  five 
years  by  twenty  per  cent ;  the  prices  were  fair  ;  the  valuations  were 
at  the  standard  of  gold;  and,  for  the  additional  reason  that,  it  was 
the  year  to  which  the  census  returns  closely  apply,  embracing,  as 
they  did,  the  latter  half  of  18G9  and  the  first  half  of  1860. 

In  that  year  our  domestic  exports,  exclusive  of  the  precious  met 
als,  amounted  to  three  hundred  and  sixteen  millions  of  dollars,  at 
custom  house  valuation. 

These  exports  consisted  of  agricultural  products,  animal  and  veg 
etable,  no  further  altered  from  their  primitive  forms  than  is  neces 
sary  for  their  preservation  and  transportation  beyond  seas,  to  the 
amount  of  fifty  millions;  (of  these  $45,250,000  in  breadstuffs  and 
provisions);  the  products  of  the  sea  and  the  forests  in  like  condi 
tion,  to  the  value  of  eighteen  millions;  of  raw  cotton,  one  hundred 
and  ninety-two  millions ;  raw  tobacco,  sixteen  millions — an  aggre 
gate  of  two  hundred  and  seventy-six  millions ;  and  of  manufactures 
of  all  kinds,  a  fraction  less  than  forty  millions ;  which  figures  give 
us  twelve  and  one-half  per  cent,  or  one-eighth,  of  the  value  of  our 
total  domestic  exports  in  manufactures,  and  seven-eighths  in  such 
goods  as  were  parted  with,  as  nearly  as  possible,  in  their  primitive 
forms.  Of  these  manufactures,  it  is  to  be  noted,  moreover,  that 
there  were  less  than  six  millions  in  all  forms  of  iron  and  steel;  just 
two  millions  of  copper,  brass  and  lead ;  and  of  cotton  fabrics,  less 
than  eleven  millions;  of  leather,  and  of  hemp  manufactures,  less 
than  two  millions;  of  tallow  caudles,  soap,  and  spirits  from  grain, 
and  of  lard  and  linseed  oil,  a  million  and  a  half;  of  woolens  nothing 
worth  a  place  among  the  enumerated  articles,  and  of  bread  and  bis- 


THE  FARMERS'  QUESTION.  181 

cuit,  half  a  million ;  and,  nothing  else  that  concerns  the  farming 
interests  of  the  country  except  three  and  a  third  millions  worth  of 
segars  and  snuff — eighteen  millions,  all  told,  of  manufactures  from 
materials  furnished  by  our  farmers  and  planters ;  or,  the  foreign 
trade  in  these  articles  made  an  additional  market  at  home  for  one- 
half  this  value  in  raw  materials. 

Our  planters  and  farmers  found  markets  abroad  that  year  for  raw 
cotton,  rice,  and  raw  tobacco,  and  for  breadstuff's  and  provisions  to 
the  value  of  two  hundred  and  fifty-eight  millions. 

The  products  of  farming  and  planting  that  year  amounted  in 
value  to  full  twenty-five  hundred  millions.  They  had  a  foreign  mar 
ket  for  ten  and  five-eighths  per  cent  of  their  products  in  money 
value. 

But  there  are  distinct  interests  involved  in  the  form  of  the  state 
ment  :  the  agriculturists,  other  than  those  who  cultivated  cotton,  as 
miners  dig  for  gold,  for  the  products  which  exhaust  the  sources  of 
supply,  and  who  had  no  policy  beyond  the  current  profit  of  their 
pursuit,  must  be  distinguished  from  those  whose  business  links  them 
into  the  closest  connection  with  the  industries  around  them — who 
must  secure  a  steady  and  sufficient  market  against  competition  every 
where  confronting  them,  and  must,  at  the  same  time,  husband  and 
improve  the  source  of  their  supplies  as  gold-diggers  cannot  do,  and 
cotton-planters  will  not.  Our  farmers  proper  had  a  product  worth 
twenty-three  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  of  which  the  foreign  mar 
ket  took  from  them  but  fifty-nine  millions  worth,  or  two  and  one-half 
per  cent,  or  one  in  forty  dollars  worth. 

The  cotton  growers'  crop  amounted  to  5,198,077  bales,  of  which 
foreign  nations  purchased  3,812,345,  or  nearly  seventy-five  per 
cent.  They  found  a  home  market  for  $61,000,000,  and  a  foreign 
market  for  $192,000,000  worth.  Here  we  have  a  vast  difference 
in  the  respective  interests  of  the  planter  and  farmer  in  our  foreign 
trade — showing,  again,  the  necessity  of  attending  to  the  specialties 
of  the  many  and  dissimilar  subjects  of  commercial  exchanges. 
These  differences  are  so  great  and  so  important  that  we  can  but 
suggest  and  submit  them  for  reflection.  Cotton,  for  instance,  held 
foreign  relations  threefold  stronger  than  its  interests  at  home.  Its 
rule  favored  neither  the  laborers  employed  by  it,  nor  the  prosperity 
of  any  other  national  industry.  It  produced  upon  the  planter  none 
of  the  distinguishing  influences  which  arc  expressed  in  the  good 


182  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

old  name  of  husbandman,  as  applied  to  the  tiller  of  the  soil  who 
depends  upon  it  for  exhaustless  support.  Ifc  made  the  cultivator 
nomadic  by  its  exhaustiveuess.  It  compelled  him  to  be  an  annexa- 
tionist  of  new  territory.  Cotton  had  no  patriotism.  It  was  cosmo 
politan  in  all  its  instincts  and  interests,  for  it  was  a  monopolist.  It 
looked  to  its  markets,  and  knew  nothing  but  money  values.  It  had 
no  impulses  that  could  make  its  system  one  that  can  be  governed 
by  the  leading  idea  of  productive  power.  It  was  exhaustive  of  its 
soil,  of  its  labor,  and,  eventually,  of  itself.  It  had,  as  a  special  and 
exclusive  industry,  all  the  qualities  and  characters  that  made  it 
look  to  foreign  trade  for  its  sales,  and  for  all  its  purchasers.  It  was 
the  very  ideal  of  a  system  of  exports  and  imports,  and,  therefore, 
so  far  was  it  from  embracing  the  harmonies  of  all  industrial  inter 
ests  that  it  warred  upon  them  all.  It  was,  from  the  day  it  achieved 
its  supremacy  in  commerce  and  crowned  itself  king,  in  a  constant 
commercial  rebellion  against  the  republicanism  of  diversified  labor. 
Such,  indeed,  is  the  character  of  every  isolated  pursuit;  such  is 
the  history  of  all  mining  countries  that  ever  obtained  the  mastery 
of  the  world's  trade.  They  would  not  consider  the  interests  of  any 
industry  unless  it  could  be  made  a  tributary.  Men  are  nothing  to 
them  but  instruments  of  production,  and,  the  Providence,  which 
we  call  the  world's  policy  of  business,  naturally  destroys  them. 

It  is  not  so  with  husbandry.  In  its  simplest  forms  it  cannot 
even  maintain  its  own  rights  and  liberties ;  and  it  never  can  grow 
into  strength  and  maturity  but  in  harmony  and  interdependence 
with  all  the  other  forms  of  diversified  production.  It  prospers  in 
a  fair  copartnership  of  interests,  and  has  no  tendencies  against 
fairly  distributed  and  mutually  beneficial  industries. 

But,  let  us  return  to  the  value  of  foreign  trade  as  affording  a 
market  to  the  people  of  the  United  States.  The  foreign  consump 
tion  of  our  agricultural  products,  as  we  have  seen,  at  the  highest 
figure  which  they  ever  reached  before  the  time  of  our  civil  war, 
amounted  to  about  two  per  cent  of  the  annual  product.  They 
were  taken  by  the  foreign  consumers  to  the  value  of  barely  such 
an  amount  as  would  have  been  consumed  by  an  additional  number 
of  people  at  home  equal  to  one  forty-eighth  of  our  population,  or 
about  640,000  people.  The  exports  so  taken  were  necessarily  of 
the  cheapest,  coarsest,  and  least  profitable  of  the  products  of  our 
soil.  They  were  such  as  grow  upon  land  worth  from  five  to  thirty 


FARMERS'  QUESTION.  183 

dollars  per  acre,  arid  which  cannot  be  produced  in  surplus  abund 
ance  on  land  worth  more.  They  are  bulky,  and  are  of  kinds  that, 
after  bearing  all  the  cost  of  transportation,  are  sure  to  meet  the 
rival  products  of  every  semi-barbarous  country  in  the  great 
markets  of  the  world  which  they  seek.  The  other  products  of 
land  which  will  not  bear  distant  carriage,  in  a  home  market  bring 
prices  which  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  value  of  lands  near  a 
great  city  as  contrasted  with  that  of  the  prairies  of  the  remote 
West. 

One  more  carpenter,  blacksmith,  shoemaker,  or  other  artisan,  in 
every  township  in  the  United  States,  would  give  a  larger,  surer, 
better  market  to  its  farmers  than  all  the  foreign  world  ever  did,  or 
ever  can  afford  them.  Distance  at  home  of  two  or  three  hundred 
miles,  eats  up  half  the  value  of  their  produce  though  they  have  the 
entire  market  of  the  country  to  themselves.  It  costs  the  price  of 
one  bushel  of  wheat,  when  it  is  at  seventy-five  cents  per  bushel,  to 
send  another  from  central  Illinois  to  Liverpool;  and  sometimes,  corn 
in  the  ear  is  used  in  the  more  distant  localities  for  fuel,  because  it 
will  pay  nothing,  beyond  the  cost  of  carriage,  in  the  eastern  cities 
of  the  Union.  Shall  a  foreign  market  be  sought  for,  in  the  face  of 
all  its  uncertainties  and  expensiveness,  to  the  neglect  of  a  system 
which  will  provide  a  home  consumption  steady,  and  certainly  remu 
nerative  ? 

The  effort  to  promote  immigration  from  Europe,  now  stirring  the 
people  of  every  region  at  the  shortest  distances  from  our  sea-board 
cities,  is  testimony  to  the  truth  and  force  of  the  views  here  pre 
sented.  The  cry  is  for  labor,  indeed,  but  the  no  less  important  want 
is,  for  home  consumers.  A  working  man  is  all  the  more  welcome  if 
he  brings  with  him  a  family  of  four  or  five  persons  to  feed  and 
clothe. 

In  the  President's  message  of  December  6, 1869,  we  find,  involved 
in  a  few  sentences  of  the  plainest  practical  recommendation  to 
Congress  upon  the  subject  of  the  nation's  industrial  interests,  a 
complete  exposition  of,  and  directory  for,  the  conduct  of  our  foreign 
trade.  lie  says  "  the  extension  of  railroads*in  Europe  and  the  East 
is  bringing  into  competition  with  our  agricultural  products  like  pro 
ducts  of  other  countries." 

Let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the  character  and  value  of  the 
European  market  for  our  breadstuffs  in  a  past  period,  long  enough 


184  QUESTIONS    OP   THE   DAY. 

to  take  in  its  usual  fluctuations.  Inasmuch  as  we  have  no  sale  for  our 
breadstuffs  in  Europe  except  in  the  British  Islands — all  the  other 
European  countries  needing  foreign  supplies,  receiving  them  from 
near  neighbors,  Russia,  Prussia,  France,  and  the  Turkish  dominions 
— we  have  the  data  for  our  purpose  unusually  compact  and  accurate 
in  matters  of  this  kind :  we  have  the  British  official  reports,  and 
from  them  we  give  the  facts.  We  quote  the  British  "  Statistical 
Abstract"  of  the  year  18GG,  page  forty-two,  which  gives  the  total 
imports  into  the  United  Kingdom  for  fifteen  years — from  1851  to 
1865,  inclusive;  a  period  that  covers  the  ordinary  range  of  good  and 
bad  British  harvests,  commercial  troubles,  and  includes,  besides,  the 
two  years'  Crimean  War  (March  1854  to  April  1856).  The  quan 
tities  are  given  in  hundred  weights,  gross ;  the  flour  being  reduced 
to  its  equivalent  in  wheat,  and  thus  included  in  the  aggregates. 
We  shall  use  the  more  familiar  measure  expressed  in  bushels,  in 
rendering  the  statement. 

In  the  first  place,  we  see  the  unsteadiness  of  demand  in  the  wide 
range  of  the  total  imports  from  all  countries ;  twenty-six  millions  of 
bushels  being  the  amount  in  the  lowest  year  and  ninety-three  mil 
lions  in  the  highest.  In  only  four  of  these  fifteen  years  did  the 
import  rise  above  fifty-six  millions;  the  average  of  the  other  eleven 
years,  selected  for  their  nearer  agreement,  being  forty-one  millions ; 
and  even  these  fluctuated  from  twenty-six  to  forty-five  and  one-half 
millions. 

Not  only  the  great  range  of  fluctuation  in  the  demand,  which  in 
one  of  these  years  was  three  and  a  half  times  greater  than  in  the  lowest 
of  seven  years  before,  but  the  suddenness  of  the  changes  are  specially 
noteworthy:  in  a  single  year  varying  from  twenty-three  millions  to 
forty-two  millions ;  in  another  year,  from  ninety-three  to  fifty-seven 
and,  to  add,  if  anything  can  add,  to  the  uncertainties  of  such  a 
market,  by  fa*r  the  lowest  average  imports  of  any  two  consecutive 
years  in  this  period,  were  those  of  the  Crimean  War.  These  points 
exhibit  the  fearful  unreliableness  of  a  market  for  a  product  that 
must  be  sown  and  prepared  for  it,  a  year  before  it  must  meet  its  fate. 

But  our  share  of  the  risk  runs  even  tenfold  wilder  than  that  of 
the  general  demand.  In  1855  the  United  Kingdom  took  from  us 
800,000,  in  1860,  17,221,546,  and  in  1865,  2,629,347  bushels  of 
wheat  and  its  equivalent  in  flour;  and  in  respect  to  our  distributive 
share  of  the  supply;  in  1851  we  furnished  seventeen  per  cent  of  the 


THE  FARMERS'  QUESTION.  185 

total  import;  in  1860,  twenty-nine  per  cent,  and  in  1865,  five  and 
three-quarters  per  cent.  While,  as  if  to  expose  still  more  surprisingly 
the  capriciousness  of  this  trade,  in  1864,  the  worst  year  of  our 
Rebellion,  for  such  a  calculation,  we  sent  them  thirty-five  per  cent 
of  their  total  foreign  receipts. 

The  only  other  grain  to  be  considered  is  our  maize  or  Indian  corn. 
The  British  import  account  stands  thus:  in  1865,  total  imports, 
seven  millions  cwts. — of  this,  from  the  Turkish  .dominions,  over 
three  millions ;  from  the  United  States,  one  and  three-quarter  mil 
lions.  In  1864,  from  Turkish  dominions,  three  and  two-third  mil 
lions ;  from  the  United  States,  294,263.  In  1859,  14,417  cwts. 
from  United  States,  and  from  European  countries,  5,618,727.  In 
1861  we  sent  them  7,385,718  cwts.,  or  512  times  more  than  in 
1859,  and  in  1864  they  took  from  us  twenty-five  times  less  than  in 
1861,  and  twenty  times  more  than  in  1859  ! 

Now  look  at  the  variance  of  prices  for  our  breadstuffs  in  London  : 
our  wheat  brought  83s.  9d.  per  quarter  of  eight  imperial  (equal  to 
something  over  eight  and  one-quarter  of  our  bushels)  in  1855; 
in  1864,  40.9.  5d.  per  quarter,  and  in  the  intermediate  years  various 
rates  between  these  prices ;  at  the  former  price  taking  3,609,583 
bushels,  at  the  latter  18.811,204,  being  about  $2.44  per  American 
bushel  at  the  highest,  and  $1.18  at  the  lower  rate,  put  down  in 
Liverpool  or  London;  cost  of  freight,  commissions,  insurance  and 
profits  of  all  intermediate  dealers  included.  The  average  of  this 
wide  range  of  prices  for  our  wheat  was  $1.45  per  American  bushel 
in  the  English  markets.  The  average  quantity  per  annum,  eighteen 
and  one-eighth  millions  of  bushels,  and  the  variance  of  quantity 
was,  in  the  lowest  year,  803,607  bushels,  and  in  the  highest, 
9,100,707— the  former  in  1859,  the  latter  in  1862,  which  latter 
extraordinary  quantity  brought  but  $1.47  per  bushel,  as  against  the 
average  of  British  wheat  in  the  same  year,  $1.63. 

Our  own  population  consumes  five  bushels  of  wheat  per  head 
per  annum,  31,000,000  of  persons,  our  number  in  1860,  giving  a 
market  for  155,000,000  bushels. 

The  British  official  reports  of  imports  from  the  United  States  for 
the  four  years  1865-8  show  the  effects  of  the  railroad  system  in 
Europe  in  lessening  our  market  there  for  wheat  and  flour  in  most 
remarkable  figures.  In  the  four  years  1861-4  they  imported  from 
us  59,322,160  cwt. — forty-four  and  one-third  per  cent  of  their  total 
13 


186  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

import;  from  all  other  countries,  74,555,294.  But  in  the  four 
years  1865-8  they  took  from  us  but  16,522,509  cwt. — only  twelve 
and  three-quarters  per  cent,  and  from  other  countries  113,297,- 
549  cwt.,  which  was  eighty-seven  and  one-quarter  per  cent  of  the 
total.  Here,  then,  we  have  our  average  cut  down  from  18.500.000 
bushels  per  annum  in  the  eight  years  preceding  1865.  to  7.727,837 
in  the  four  years  since;  or,  the  population  of  the  British  islands 
are  now  consuming  one  peck  of  our  wheat  per  head  per  annum. 

The  home  consumption  of  five  bushels  per  head,  with  a  protec 
tion  of  twenty  cents  per  bushel  against  the  wheat  of  Canada,  and 
an  immigration  now  able  to  consume  our  whole  surplus,  is  surely 
a  market  better  worth  striving  for,  and  securing  by  a  policy  of 
domestic  industry,  which  is  now  increasing  this  home  market  at  an 
unprecedented  rate. 

We  have  made  our  arithmetical  demonstration  of  the  insecurity 
and  insignificance  of  our  only  European  market  for  breadstuffs  on 
wheat  and  flour  alone.  In  respect  to  provisions  of  all  other  kinds, 
which  are  among  the  transportable  products  of  agriculture,  the 
same  story  may  be  told. 

To  illustrate  and  prove  this  we  need  only  refer  to  our  own  report 
of  Commerce  and  Navigation  for  the  fiscal  year  1859-60 — the 
greatly  largest  year  of  our  foreign  trade  previous  to  the  commence 
ment  of  our  civil  war.  In  that  year  we  exported  to  British  Europe, 
of  farm  products  proper,  to  the  value  of  only  $18,100.762,  and 
imported  from  them  articles  identical  with,  or  corresponding  to 
these  exports  of  the  value  of  83,902,535,  leaving,  when  deducted, 
a  market  for  no  more  than  814,198,227.  The  commodities  here 
embraced  were  breadstuffs  and  provisions  of  all  kinds,  hides,  tallow, 
leather,  oils,  lard,  wool,  ashes,  oil-cake,  wax,  seeds,  hops,  oats, 
spirits,  and  other  raw  materials.  If  we  add  lumber  in  all  forms 
($709,312)  we  have  in  round  numbers  agricultural  exports  for  the 
year  amounting  to  815,000,000. 

France,  which  is  herself  a  large  exporter  of  agricultural  pro 
ducts,  of  course  did  still  less.  The  aggregate  value  of  all  similar 
articles  which  she  took  from  us  that  year  amounted  to  barely 
$1,568,295,  and  to  all  Europe  beside  less  than  another  million  and 
a  half— all  told,  about  $18,000,000  worth  of  farm  products  proper. 

Cotton  and  tobacco  are  not  included  in  these  amounts,  and  if 
the  latter  claims  a  place  on  account  of  the  growing  culture  by  our 


THE  FARMERS'  QUESTION.  187 

farmers,  as  part  of  their  varied  crops,  then  $16,000,000  covers  the 
total  export  in  leaf,  and  $3,375,000,  manufactured. 

To  get  another  view  of  our  foreign  markets,  and  of  their  value  to 
our  own  agriculture,  it  is  worth  while  to  note  that  in  the  fiscal  year 
1859-60,  our  total  exports  of  breadstuffs  and  provisions  were  $38,- 
858,086,  and  of  these  there  went  to  all  manufacturing  countries  in 
Europe — (Great  Britain,  France,  Germany,  Holland,  Belgium,  and 
the  Free  cities)  just  $13,952,988,  or  thirty-six  per  cent  of  the  total; 
the  balance  being  taken  by  non-manufacturing  countries  in  the  East 
ern  hemisphere,  and  in  America.  Seventy-seven  per  cent  of  our  leaf 
tobacco  also  went  to  agricultural  countries,  making  together  $31,750,- 
000  to  those  with  whom  we  have  no  rival  industries,  while  $31,500,000 
went  to  the  peoples  whom  we  designate  as  manufacturing,  because 
our  imports  from  them  are  such  as  displace  our  own  products  of  the 
like  kinds. 

Is  it  not  well,  as  a  farmer's  question,  to  analyze  our  foreign  trade 
in  exports,  that  we  may  the  better  understand  how  far  and  where 
our  interests  lie  in  the  direction  of  raising  raw  materials  for  foreign 
trade  ?  Leaving  out  tobacco  and  cotton  we  had  in  our  best  year  of 
foreign  trade  a  market  for  agricultural  raw  materials  of  all  kinds  of 
less  than  twenty  millions,  among  all  the  nations  to  which  the  trade 
theorists  resign  us  for  our  supply  of  the  things  which  employ  skilled 
labor;  and  if  we  add  tobacco,  the  sum  is  but  $31,500,000.  The 
non-manufacturing  countries  took  from  us  thirty-two  millions  worth 
of  our  manufactures,  while  the  rest  of  the  world  took  a  little  less 
than  eight  millions  worth.  Leaving  cotton  out  of  the  account,  the 
non-manufacturing  nations  took  from  us  $63,750,000  of  our  total 
exports  of  commodities,  other  than  gold  and  silver,  and  the  manu 
facturing  peoples  took  $53,750,000.  Which  way  lies  our  trade  as 
indicated  by  our  exchanges  of  farming  products  with  the  rest  of 
the  world  ? 

Again  :  our  imports  for  that  year  from  non-manufacturing  coun 
tries  amounted  to  forty-two  and  four-tenths  per  cent,  or  seven-six 
teenths  of  the  whole.  Legitimate  trade  thus  far  asserted  itself  in 
spite  of  the  unfavorable  policy  which  invited  our  industrial  rivals  to 
disturb  it. 

The  farming  interest, — so  persistently  appealed  to  for  the  support 
of  a  system  that  assigns  to  us  the  function  of  supplying  food  and 
raw  material  for  the  higher  styles  of  production  in  other  countries, — • 


188  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

we  need  only  point  to  the  fact  that  the  policy  never  gave  them  cus 
tomers  abroad  for  more  than  twenty  millions  worth  of  their  special 
products — never  gave  them  a  promise  reliable  for  even  that  much, 
or  half  that  much,  in  time  to  provide  for  it — and  always,  the  quan 
tity  so  far  influenced  the  price,  that  the  actual  profit  is  exceedingly 
questionable.  The  trade  in  this  respect  has  this  complexion :  in  the 
four  years,  1854-7,  when  our  wheat  averaged  two  dollars  per  bushel, 
in  London  they  took  38,764,581  bushels,  but  when  they  took  in  the 
four  years,  1861—4,  110,734,715  bushels,  the  price  averaged  one 
dollar  and  forty  cents.  See  the  difference :  at  the  higher  price, 
9,500,000,  and  at  the  lower,  27,500,000  bushels,  per  annum. 

We  cannot  settle  the  profits  of  this  trade,  as  they  fall  into  the 
hands  of  the  merchant  exporters,  factors  and  other  middlemen;  but 
we  are  clear  that  wherever  the  farmer  gets  the  foreign  market  for 
the  larger  quantity,  it  is  at  the  cost  of  the  lower  price ;  and,  when 
ever  the  higher  prices  rule  in  England,  he  is  reduced  in  his  sales  to 
about  one-third  of  the  quantity,  as  in  the  instances  last  cited. 

But  some  one  will  say — it  is  the  surplus  of  production  only  that 
is  so  transported,  and  at  any  price,  it  is  so  much  gain  or  escape  of 
loss.  Not  so.  If  81.40  in  London  means  seventy  cents  to  the 
farmer  in  the  West,  the  reaction  of  the  London  price  cuts  down  that 
of  all  that  is  retained  or  sold  in  the  home  market,  and  the  foreign 
sales  take  off  never  so  much  as  thirty  millions  from  the  annual  crop 
which  ordinarily  rises  to  at  least  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  mil 
lions  .  So,  if  they  get  at  this  rate  for  the  whole  crop  $122,500,000,  and 
the  reflected  effect  of  the  foreign  sales  cuts  down  the  price  of  all  but 
fifteen  cents  per  bushel,  the  total  exportation  is  a  dead  loss;  it  might 
as  well  be  cast  into  the  sea,  or  far  better,  fed  to  horses  and  hogs  at 
home;  for  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  million  bushels  at  seventy 
cents,  is  worth  no  more  than  one  hundred  and  forty-five  millions 
at  eighty-five  cents. 

From  all  which  it  appears  now,  as  it  did  in  1824  when  General 
Jackson  wrote  his  Coleman  letter,  where  *he  asks:  "What  is  the 
real  situation  of  the  American  agriculturist?  Where  has  the 
American  farmer  a  market  for  his  surplus  products  ?  Except  for 
cotton  he  has  neither  a  home  nor  a  foreign  market.  Take,  [he  con 
tinues,]  from  agriculture  in  the  United  States  six  hundred  thousand 
men,  women  and  children,  and  you  will  at  once  give  a  home  market 
for  more  breadstuff's  than  all  Europe  now  furnishes  us." 


THE  FARMERS'  QUESTION.  189 

The  condition  of  the  country  is  so  far  changed  now,  that  General 
Grant  points  to  the  home  market  as  the  only  reliable  one,  and  indi 
cates  the  causes  at  work  which  will  speedily  destroy  even  the 
insignificant  outlet  which  has  heretofore  been  found  in  the  only 
country  in  Europe  where  we  ever  sold  any  breadstuff's  and  provisions 
at  all.  Jackson  wrote  his  letter  in  1824.  Forty-five  years  have,  in  a 
good  measure,  taken  away  one  limb  of  Jackson's  complaint,  by 
setting  in  operation,  to  a  great  extent,  the  remedy  he  prescribed. 
The  home  market  is  tolerably  well  built  up ;  and  it  remained  only 
for  President  Grant  to  warn  us  that  the  foreign  reliance  is  rapidly 
getting  worse,  and  to  urge  the  maintenance  and  extension  of  the 
system  of  domestic  manufactures  which  will  enable  us  to  dispense 
with  it,  without  any  detriment  by  deprivation. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

FREE    TRADE    AND    PROTECTION. 

Political  Economy  not  a  science;  opinions  of  Daniel  Webster  and  Napoleon 
Bonaparte. — J.  B.  Say's  work  prohibited  by  Napoleon. — The  labor  interests  of 
the  continent  of  Europe  defended  against  Great  Britain. — "  Industry  &  property." 
Lord  Brougham  and  Joseph  Hume  would  strangle  foreign  manufactures  in  their 
cradle. — British  capital  the  instrument,  of  warfare  against  foreign  competition. 
HISTORY  of  protection  and  free  trade  in  the  experience  of  the  United  States. 
Variety  and  extent  of  our  territory,  composition  of  our  population. — British 
restrictions  of  colonial  industry. — Manufactures  freed  and  fostered  by  the  war 
of  the  Revolution ;  their  great  progress ;  Hamilton's  Report  in  1791 ;  they  perish 
for  want  of  protection  between  1783  and  1789.— Testimony  of  Dr.  Williamson, 
John  Marshall,  Ramsey,  Belknap  and  Madison. — Protection  avowed  in  the  first 
tariff  act  of  the  first  Federal  Congress. — Washington  on  the  results  of  protection. 
— The  continental  wars,  from  1793  to  1815,  with  our  embargo,  non-importation 
act,  and  our  own  war  of  1812  effectually  defended  our  manufactures. — Con 
gressional  report  of  1815  proves  their  prosperity. — Slight  advance  in  the  ensuing 
thirty  years. — The  free  trade  period,  1816  to  1824,  ending  in  universal  dis 
tress.— The  evils  all  remedied  by  protection  from  1824  to  1832.— Character  of 
these  tariff  acts. — Tariff  for  protection  proved  to  be  most  productive  of  rev 
enue. — Faults,  and  resulting  mischief  of  the  protection  theory  at  this  period. — 
Act  of  1832  gave  us  the  first  well-principled  free  list;  discharge  of  the  national 
debt;  surplus  in  the  treasury;  reduction  of  income  attended  by  reduction  of 
customs  rates — the  free  trade  theory  of  that  day. — The  directly  contrary 
doctrine  of  the  free  traders  in  1846  and  1856. — The  same  party  now  again 
returns  to  the  doctrine  of  1832,  which  is  once  more  refuted  by  the  high 
rates  of  1861-71  as  it  was  in  1824-32;  the  nullification  era,  and  the  sur 
render  of  protection. — Capital  and  labor  driven  from  the  Eastern  to  the 
Western  States. — Enormous  increase  of  the  sales  of  the  public  lands. — Great 
reduction  of  the  customs,  bankruptcy  of  the  people  and  of  the  Treasury. — In 
crease  of  imports  and  inflation  of  bauk  eredir%  and  currency. — Inflation  of  the 
currency  due  to  excess  of  imports;  never  did  or  could  happen  under  adequate 
protection. — "  Periodic  "  financial  and  business  revulsions  due  to  free  trade. — 
Consequences  of  the  Compromise  Act  bring  about  another  change  of  commer 
cial  policy,  and  give  us  the  protective  tariff  of  1842. — Change  from  specific  to 
ad  valorem  duties  in  1846. — Consequent  unsteadiness  of  its  protective  provisions. 
Temporary  reliefs  from  the  European  famine  of  1848  ;  the  Crimean  War  of  1854 ; 
discoveries  of  gold  in  1850  and  the  excessive  production  and  export  of  Southern 
staples. — A  sufficient  success  of  the  protective  rates,  thus  corroborated,  once 
more  invites  the  overthrow  of  the  protective  policy. — The  reduced  rates  of  the  aet 
190 


PROTECTION  AND  FREE  TRADE.  191 

of  1857  precipitate  the  issue,  and  the  revulsion  and  specie  suspension  of  1857  fol 
low. — A  greater  and  a  worse  revulsion  prevented  by  the  great  Rebellion  of 
1S61 — grounds  of  this  opinion. — The  Morrill  tariff  and  amendments. — The 
national  industry  defended  and  sustained;  the  expenditures  of  the  war  pro 
vided;  the  public  debt  greatly  reduced;  the  threatened  collapse  of  the  country 
postponed  six  years;  the  Treasury  overflowing,  and,  another  pretext  provided 
for  the  ruinous  policy  of  free  trade. 

THE  reader  of  these  papers  will  have  noticed,  perhaps,  with  some 
surprise,  and  it  may  be  with  even  some  less  favorable  feeling,  my 
reiterated  denials  of  the  pretensions  of  "Political  Economy"  to 
the  name  and  rank  of  a  science.  It  is  just  here,  in  the  foreground 
of  the  great  debate,  that  I  join  issue  with  the  free  trade  theorists. 
Let  me  shelter  my  audacity  under  the  authority  of  two  statesmen, 
one  of  whom  had  large  opportunity,  and  as  large  capacity,  for 
testing  its  theoretical  pretensions,  and  the  other  the  most  pressing 
necessity  for  judging  its  doctrines  in  their  practical  application. 
The  first  whom  I  cite  is  Daniel  Webster.  In  a  letter  to  Mr. 
Dutton,  dated  May  9th,  1830,  he  says:  "Though  I  like  the 
investigation  of  particular  questions,  I  give  up  what  is  called  the 
'  Science  of  Political  Economy.'  There  is  no  such  science.  There 
are  no  rules  on  these  subjects  so  fixed  and  invariable  as  that  their 
aggregate  constitutes  a  science.  I  believe  that  I  have  recently 
run  over  twenty  volumes,  from  Adam  Smith  to  Professor  Dew,  of 
Virginia,  and  from  the  whole,  if  I  were  to  pick  out  with  one  hand 
all  the  mere  truisms,  and,  with  the  other,  all  the  doubtful  proposi 
tions,  little  would  be  left."* 

My  other  protector  is  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  Adam  Smith's 
"Wealth  of  Nations"  was  fairly  afloat  in  1784.  In  1803  J.  B. 
Say  published  his  "Treatise  on  the  Production,  Distribution,  and 
Consumption  of  Wealth,"  in  which  he  methodized  the  irregular 
mass  of  curious  and  original  speculations  of  Smith,  and  gave  to  the 
new-born  science  the  form  and  order  which  has  ever  since  governed 
the  method  of  cultivating  its  themes.  When  Napoleon  subjected  it 
to  his  practical  style  of  criticism,  he  said,  "  If  an  empire  were  made 

*  In  this  sweeping  sentence  it  is  to  be  observed  that  Adam  Smith  is  expressly 
named,  and  among  the  twenty  volumes  must  have  been  included  Malthus, 
Rieardo,  J.  B.  Say,  and  J.  R.  McCulloch,  for  all  these  were  in  the  libraries  then, 
and  these  authors  are  still  regarded  by  their  followers  as  the  founders  and  the 
authorities  of  their  school.  Our  American  authors,  Carey,  List,  and  Colwell, 
could  not  have  been  included  in  the  verdict  of  the  great  "  expounder,"  for 
neither  of  these  published  his  works  until  after  the  year  1S36. 


192  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

of  adamant,  political  economy  would  grind  it  to  powder."  He  pro 
hibited  its  further  publication  in  France  for  a  dozen  years.  He 
saw  that  the  logic  of  the  work  was  specious,  and  he  knew  that  it 
was  pernicious;  and,  being  too  busy  with  the  government  of  a 
nation  to  enter  the  lists  as  a  disputant,  he  interdicted  the  book. 

Under  the  circumstances  he  did  exactly  right.  The  short  answer 
of  a  blockade  all  around  the  coasts  of  continental  Europe,  declared 
by  the  Berlin  and  Milan  decrees,  was  the  practical  solution  of  the 
questions  involved.  Then,  again,  the  sword  cut  the  gordian  knot, 
and  France  and  Germany  were  thereby  released  from  industrial 
dependence  upon  Great  Britain  forever.  A  professor  of  political 
economy  could  not  have  done  as  much  with  any  quantity  of 
foolscap. 

Napoleon  had  another  idea  worthy  of  him.  "Formerly,"  he 
said,  u  there  was  only  one  kind  of  property,  land;  another  has 
since  arisen,  industry  ;  "  and  he  held  it  as  wise  and  as  necessary  to 
defend  the  one  as  the  other  from  foreign  invasion.  He  knew  that 
a  nation's  welfare  is  not  measured  by  its  foreign  trade,  but  by  its 
productive  power — that  the  policy  of  a  huckster  is  not  a  directory 
for  the  conduct  of  national  affairs ;  and  he  freely  sacrificed  prices, 
while  he  fostered  the  power  that  produces  values.  He  would  not 
stand  haggling  over  the  market  cost  of  commodities,  but  addressed 
his  policy  to  the  real  issue :  how  shall  a  nation  increase  its  power 
to  command  and  consume  them?  Such  minds  as  his  are  prophetic. 
He  needed  not  to  wait  till  1815,  when  Lord  Brougham,  in  Parlia 
ment,  said,  "England  can  afford  to  incur  some  loss  on  the  export  of 
English  goods,  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  manufactures  in  their 
cradle ;"  or  for  the  avowal  made  by  the  renowned  Joseph  Hurne^ 
in  1828,  that  he  desired  "  to  see  the  manufactures  of  the  Conti 
nent  strangled  in  the  cradle ;"  nor  needed  he  to  wait  for  the  Parlia 
ment  report  of  its  commissioner  appointed  in  1854  to  inquire  into 
the  state  of  the  population  in  the  mining  districts,  in  which  the  fol 
lowing  argument  is  addressed  to  the  strikers  for  higher  wages : 
"Authentic  instances  are  well  known  of  [English]  employers 
having  in  such  times  [times  of  depressed  prices]  carried  OD  their 
works  at  a  loss  amounting  to  three  or  four  hundred  thousand 
pounds  in  the  course  of  three  or  four  years.  If  the  efforts  of  those 
who  encourage  the  combination  to  restrict  the  amount  of  labor,  and 
to  produce  strikes,  were  to  be  successful  for  any  length  of  time, 


PROTECTION    AND    FREE    TRADE.  193 

the  great  accumulations  could  be  no  longer  made  which  enable  a 
few  of  the  most  wealthy  capitalists  to  overwhelm  all  foreign  com 
petition  in  times  of  great  depression.  The  large  capitals  of  this 
country  are  the  great  instruments  of  warfare  (if  the  expression 
may  be  allowed)  against  the  competing  capitals  of  foreign  coun 
tries,  and  are  the  most  essential  instruments  now  remaining,  by 
which  our  manufacturing  supremacy  can  be  maintained."  Napoleon 
foresaw  all  these  threats  of  free  foreign  trade  reduced  to  practice, 
and  fortified  the  industry  of  France  against  them  as  vigorously  as 
he  defended  the  soil  itself  against  the  invasion  and  domination  of 
foreign  foes,  and  for  the  same  and  even  better  reasons. 

These  preliminaries  are  intended  to  apprise  the  students  of  our 
subject  that  we  take  ground,  first,  against  the  logic  and  the  method 
of  the  theory  of  commerce  relied  upon  by  the  free  traders,  as 
wholly  fallacious  and  inapplicable;  and,  secondly,  against  its  practi 
cal  consequences,  as  directly  and  totally  opposed  to  the  requirements 
of  our  national  welfare. 

The  caption  of  this  chapter  intimates  our  intention  to  discuss  pro 
tection  and  free  trade  as  they  interlock  and  antagonize  each  other  in 
our  national  policy.  A  more  abstract  and  more  formal  treatment 
would  not  so  well  comport  with  our  design  and  our  limits.  With 
this  view  we  submit  a  very  brief  history  of  the  experience  of  the 
country  in  its  varied  experiments  of  the  respective  systems. 

Almost  within  the  memory  of  living  men,  the  United  States  have 
risen  from  the  complete  subjection  of  colonial  dependence,  and  from 
the  condition  of  separate  provinces,  united  by  no  political  bond,  to 
that  of  a  compact,  rich,  and  independent  nation;  outranking  the 
empires  of  the  old  world  in  territorial  extent,  and  varied  capabili 
ties  of  production;  equaling  the  strongest  of  them  in  population; 
composed  of  representatives  of  all  the  progressive  races  of  mankind ; 
embracing  the  soils  and  climates  of  the  whole  habitable  globe; 
shaped  into  a  continent  convenient  for  internal  commerce,  with  a 
sea-coast  so  deeply  indented,  and  a  lake  and  river  system  dissecting 
the  mass  so  thoroughly,  that  a  domain  only  one-sixth  less  than  the 
area  of  the  fifty-nine  or  sixty  empires,  states  and  republics,  of  Europe, 
and  of  equal  extent  with  the  Roman  Empire  at  its  largest,  is  cut, 
for  the  purposes  of  internal  and  external  commerce,  into  twenty 
islands  of  the  size  of  Great  Britain.  Here  are  all  the  conditions, 
in  ample  proportion  and  suitable  combination  for  the  rehearsal  of  the 


194  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

world's  history,  and  nothing  lacking  to  work  out  a  world's  destiny; 
and  here  we  have  precipitated  upon  us  every  social,  political  and 
economic  problem  of  the  past  and  future  of  human  history,  with 
the  people  of  every  kindred  and  clime  for  the  subjects  and  agents. 

The  history  of  such  a  country's  commerce  and  industry,  so  far 
advanced  as  ours  already  is,  cannot  fail  to  be  more  instructive  than 
that  of  any  other.  The  development  has  been  so  rapid;  the  suc 
cessive  periods  of  protection  and  free-trade  have  been  so  frequent 
and  sudden;  and  the  results  so  plainly  marked,  that  the  varied  ex 
periences  must  be  conclusively  demonstrative  of  the  doctrines  and 
policies  so  well  and  so  thoroughly  tried. 

The  colonies  were  held  under  restraint  so  absolute  that,  beyond 
the  common  domestic  industries,  and  the  most  ordinary  mechanical 
employments,  no  kind  of  manufactures  were  permitted.  In  1750, 
a  hatter  shop  in  Massachusetts,  was  declared  a  nuisance  by  the 
British  Parliament.  In  the  same  year  an  act  was  passed  permitting 
the  importation  of  pig  iron  from  the  colonies,  because  charcoal,  then 
exclusively  employed  in  smelting  the  ore,  was  well-nigh  exhausted 
in  England;  but  forbidding  the  erection  of  tilt-hammers,  slitting  or 
rolling  mills,  or  any  establishment  for  the  manufacture  of  steel.  In 
the  same  year  the  great  Earl  of  Chatham,  alarmed  at  our  enterprise, 
declared  that  the  colonies  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to  manufacture  so 
much  as  a  hob-nail.  This  was  protection,  after  the  manner  of  that 
day,  for  England,  and  open  ports  and  free-trade  in  all  its  bearings, 
for  the  colonies. 

The  British  navigation  laws  were  enacted  in  the  same  spirit  and 
to  the  same  intent — to  hold  the  colonies  in  commercial  and  indus 
trial  vassalage  to  the  mother  country.  Then,  we  were  restrained  by 
force  of  law  from  diversifying  our  industry  freely ;  now  we  are  per 
suaded  to  accept  the  like  dependency  upon  superior  ability  to  monopo 
lize  our  market,  by  leaving  the  choice  of  our  industries  undefended 
against  an  equally  aggressive  and  an  equally  potent  supremacy. 

A  protective  period  followed.  The  interruption  of  commerce 
with  Great  Britain  during  the  war  of  the  Revolution  awakened,  per 
force,  the  manufactures  of  the  States  that  had  the  materials  and  the 
labor  power,  so  that  at  its  close  they  found  themselves  considerably 
advanced  in  those  skilled  industries  which  make  a  nation  self-sup 
plying.  From  the  success  attained,  Alexander  Hamilton,  in  his 
celebrated  Report  upon  Manufactures,  in  1791,  argues  the  practica- 


PROTECTION  AND  FREE  TRADE.  195 

bility  and  the^duty  of  encouraging  our  manufactures.  He  enumer 
ates,  in  detail,  seventeen  grand  departments  which  were  then  well 
established.  They  prevailed  as  well  in  the  Southern  as  in  the  Mid 
dle  and  Northern  States;  and  he  is  particular  to  embrace  "avast 
scene  of  household  manufacturing,"  which  not  being  yet  displaced 
by  steam  and  machinery,  as  it  has  been  since,  he  says,  supplied,  in 
different  districts,  two-thirds,  three-fourths,  and  even  four-fifths  of 
all  the  clothing  of  the  inhabitants.  Of  textile  fabrics  he  reports, 
that  in  several  kinds,  the  domestic  fabrication  was  not  only  sufficient 
for  the  families  themselves,  but  for  sale,  and  to  such  extent  in  some 
cases  that  they  were  exported  to  foreign  countries. 

These  household  industries  were,  soon  after  the  peace  of  Paris, 
(1783).  effectually  suppressed,  so  far  as  they  had  before  been  pro 
ductive  in  excess  of  the  home  supply,  by  an  inundation  of  foreign 
goods;  for  after  the  date  of  the  treaty  of  peace,  and  previous  to  the 
organization  of  the  Federal  Government — a  period  of  seven  years — 
there  was  no  protective  power  in  the  old  confederation,  and  no  con 
currence  of  policy  among  the  several  States.  In  the  first  Federal 
Congress,  a  member  speaking  of  this  period  of  free  trade,  said,  "  We 
bought  according  to  the  doctrine  of  modern  theorists,  where  we 
could  purchase  cheapest,  and  were  soon  inundated  with  foreign 
commodities:  English  goods  were  sold  at  lower  rates  in  our  maritime 
cities  than  at  Liverpool  or  London.  Our  manufactures  were  ruined; 
our  merchants,  even  those  who  had  hoped  to  enrich  themselves  by 
importation,  became  bankrupt,  and  all  these  causes  united  had  such 
an  influence  upon  agriculture  that  a  general  depreciation  of  real 
estate  followed,  and  failure  became  general  among  the  proprietors." 

Dr.  Hugh  Williamson,  describing  the  distresses  and  disorders  of 
the  year  1786,  says,  "  The  scarcity  of  money  is  so  great,  and  the 
difficulty  of  paying  debts  has  been  so  common,  that  riots  and  com 
binations  have  been  formed  in  many  places,  and  the  operations  of 
civil  government  have  been  suspended." 

Chief  Justice  Marshall,  in  his  "Life  of  Washington,"  speaking 
of  this  crisis  generally,  and  particularly  of  the  causes  which  led  to 
Shay's  Rebellion,  says,  "On  opening  their  ports,  an  immense 
quantity  of  foreign  merchandise  was  introduced  into  the  country, 
and  they  were  tempted  by  the  sudden  cheapness  of  imported  goods, 
and  by  their  own  wants,  to  purchase  beyond  their  capacity  for  pay 
ment."  The  consequences,  as  soon  as  they  had  time  to  work  them- 


196  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

selves  out,  he  thus  describes  :  "  The  bonds  of  men,  whose  competency 
to  pay  their  debts  was  unquestionable,  could  not  be  negotiated  but 
at  a  discount  of  thirty,  forty,  and  fifty  per  centum ;  real  property  was 
scarcely  vendible;  and  sales  of  any  article  for  ready  money  could  be 
made  only  at  a  ruinous  loss."  Ramsey's  History  of  South  Carolina, 
and  Belknap's  History  of  New  Hampshire,  show  that  the  distress 
was  as  general  as  intense,  and  that  it  displayed  itself  in  "  a  disposi 
tion  everywhere  to  resist  the  laws." 

This  state  of  things,  more  than  any  other,  impelled  the  States  to 
draw  closer  the  bonds  of  political  union,  and  to  grant  the  needful 
powers  to  Congress  to  establish  an  effective  system  of  commercial 
regulations  for  the  nation.     Mr.  Madison,  in  a  letter  to  Joseph  C. 
Cabell,  dated  September  18th,  1828,  fully  and  conclusively  demon 
strates  this  point.     No  one  can  read  this  letter  without  being  con- 
Vinced  that,  above  all  other  causes,  the  sufferings  of  the  country 
from  the  evils  of  its  unprotected  industries  literally  drove  the  loosely 
confederated  states  into  a  "more  perfect  union"  empowered  to  pro 
vide  more  effectually  for  the  "general  welfare."     Protection  of  the 
home  industries  against  foreign  rivalry  was  not  only  the  sentiment, 
but,  under  pressure  of  a  terrible  experience  of  absolute  free  trade,  had 
become  the  sensation  of  the  day.     In  the  heartiest  sympathy  with 
this  general  feeling,  Washington  wore  a  coat  of  domestic  cloth  on 
the  day  of  his  inauguration,  "giving,"  as  a  New  York  journal  of 
the  day  said,  "  to  his  successors,  and  to  legislatures  of  after  time,  an 
indelible  lesson  as  to  the  means  of  promoting  national  prosperity." 
The  preamble  to  the  first  tariff  act  of  the  first  Federal  Congress, 
passed  on  the  4th  of  July,  1789.  echoes  the  urgency  of  the  public 
feeling,  in  answer  to  petitions  poured  in  from  every  State,  not  except 
ing  commercial  New  York,  or  planting  South  Carolina.     It  reads 
thus:  "Whereas  it  is  necessary  for  the  support  of  the  Government, 
for  the  discharge  of  the  debts  of  the  United  States,  and  the  encour 
agement  and  protection  of  manufactures,  that  duties  be   laid   on 
goods,  wares,  and  merchandise  imported,"  etc.     This  first  protective 
act  was  followed  by  another  of  the  10th  of  August,  1790,  largely 
increasing  the  duties  already  imposed. 

The  happy  results  of  this  policy  became  immediately  apparent — 
instantly,  indeed — as  soon  as  the  languishing  industries  felt  the 
reviving  touch  of  the  nation's  fostering  hand,  because  the  confi 
dence  of  security  has  the  power  of  credit  to  anticipate  time.  As 


PROTECTION    AND    FREE    TRADE.  197 

early  as  October,  1791,  Washington,  writing  to  La  Luzerne,  holds 
this  language :  "In  my  tour  I  confirmed  by  observation  the 
accounts  which  we  had  all  along  received  of  the  happy  effects  of  the 
General  Government  upon  our  agriculture,  commerce,  and  industry. 
The  same  effects  pervade  the  Middle  and  Eastern  States,  with  the 
addition  of  vast  progress  in  the  most  useful  manufactures." 

The  protective  rates  of  the  several  tariffs  passed  before  the  year 
1804  were  quite  too  low  to  answer  the  intention  by  their  unaided 
force,  but  in  1793  the  opening  war  of  the  continent  of  Europe, 
which  was  to  last,  with  slight  remissions,  until  1815,  operated  upon 
both  our  productive  and  commercial  interests  in  the  happiest  way. 
The  destructive  war  of  England  and  her  allies  with  the  French 
Republic  and  Empire,  the  consequent  disturbance  of  all  trans 
atlantic  labor,  and  the  suspension  of  specie  payments  by  the  Bank 
of  England,  which  lasted  from  1797  for  full  twenty  years,  raised 
prices  abroad,  and  thus  afforded  an  ample  defence  of  our  domestic 
markets.  These  again  were  helped  by  our  embargo  of  1807,  the 
non-intercourse  act  of  1809,  and  finally  by  our  war  of  1 812  ;  all  these 
causes  together  afforded  such  a  shelter,  and  gave  such  an  impulse  to 
our  infant  manufactures,  that  we  not  only  met  the  home  demand, 
but  were  able  to  furnish  a  surplus  for  exportation.  A  Congressional 
report  of  1815  puts  our  cotton  and  woolen  manufactures  at  more 
than  sixty  millions  per  annum,  with  above  one  hundred  thousand 
workmen  employed.  Thirty  years  afterwards  Secretary  Walker 
estimated  the  products  of  these  two  branches  of  manufacture  in  the 
United  States  at  no  more  than  eighty-nine  millions,  or  less  than 
fifty  per  cent  increase. 

England  in  that  thirty  years  increased  the  exports  of  her  pro 
ducts  from  forty-two  millions  of  pounds  sterling  to  one  hundred 
and  thirty-five  millions,  official  valuation,  or  two  hundred  and 
twenty  per  cent. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  war  of  Independence,  that  of  1812  had 
the  effect  to  extend  our  manufacturing  industry  by  excluding 
foreign  competition,  and  to  increase  rapidly  and  greatly  all  values,  as 
well  of  raw  materials  as  of  manufactured  goods,  labor,  and  real 
estate;  thus  giving  a  well-distributed  prosperity  to  workmen,  to 
land-holders,  and  to  international  commerce. 

But  after  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  and  the  general  pacification  of 
Europe,  England,  France,  and  Germany  went  to  work;  the  duties 


198  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

of  the  tariff  of  1816,  unsupported  by  the  previous  diversion  of 
the  European  embroilment,  were  wholly  inadequate.  Our  pros 
perity  went  down  under  a  flood  of  foreign  importations,  and  from 
1819  to  1824  the  country  presented  a  picture  of  general  distress, 
with  shadings  nearly  as  deep  and  dark  as  the  corresponding  crisis, 
which  followed  the  war  of  the  Revolution.  Seven  years  of  peace 
at  both  periods,  with  the  country's  labor  undefended,  inflicted  a 
hundredfold  more  injury  upon  the  people  than  any  such  periods  of 
war  for  the  defence  of  national  rights  ever  did  or  could  do.  The 
intolerable  mischiefs  of  the  free  trade  policy  in  the  last,  as  in  the 
former  instance,  brought  reflection  to  the  nation.  A  Democratic 
Congress  ordered  the  republication  of  Hamilton's  Report  of  1791  on 
Manufactures,  which  was  now  felt  to  be  far  better  entitled  to  be 
called  "An  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  and  Causes  of  the  Wealth  of 
Nations"  than  Adam  Smith's  treatise  bearing  that  title;  the  agri 
cultural  Middle,  Northern,  and  Western  States  joined  with  those 
more  occupied  with  manufactures,  as  in  a  common  interest,  to 
impose  higher  duties  upon  imports,  and  the  tariff  of  1824  was 
passed.  There  was,  however,  something  too  much  of  the  spirit  of 
countervailing  duties  in  this  act,  and  something  too  little  of  the 
sound  expediency  which  should  have  ruled  its  provisions.  These 
faults  were,  in  a  good  degree,  avoided  by  the  tariff  of  1828.  Its 
average  rates  upon  the  dutiable,  and  upon  the  total  imports,  ran 
something  higher,  as  in  the  circumstances  they  should  do,  than 
those  of  any  tariff  enacted  since.  The  success  of  all  its  aims  was 
absolutely  perfect.  One  of  the  results  which  most  surprised  the 
Opposition  party  at  home  and  abroad  wa$  the  fact  that  it  proved 
just  as  favorable  to  the  national  finances  as  if  that  had  been  the 
exclusive  object  of  the  policy.  It  accomplished  all  the  aims  of  the 
men  who  devised  it;  but  the  impulse  which  prompted  its  enact 
ment  transcended  the  principle  which  should  have  ruled  its  special 
provisions.  Its  supporters  did  not  venture  upon  a  free  list  so  large 
and  so  necessary  as  the  policy  of  protection  demands.  Protection 
is  simply  defense;  nothing  more,  nothing  less,  and  nothing  else. 
Every  deviation  from  this  ruling  object  is,  sooner  or  later,  mis 
chievous.  The  frainers,  perhaps,  feared  a  failure  of  revenue.  The 
statesmen  of  the  time  had  not  had  a  sufficiently  large  experience  of 
a  true  protective  policy  to  comprehend  fully  its  working  forces  in 
every  direction.  They  had  a  lurking  fear  that  adequate  protec- 


PROTECTION  AND  FREE  TRADE.  199 

live  duties  must  necessarily  diminish  the  revenue  from  customs. 
They  did  not,  and  they  could  not,  understand  the  matter  as  a  still 
more  varied  and  complete  experience  has  instructed  us,  after  forty 
years  of  additional  observation  and  trial. 

In  1832  the  duties  of  1828  were  modified;  tea,  coffee,  and  a  large 
amount,  in  variety  and  value,  of  foreign  imports,  which  in  no  way 
interfered  with  domestic  production,  but  rather  ministered  to  it, 
were  exempted  from  taxation.  But,  the  whole  national  debt  had 
been  too  quickly  reduced,  the  mass  of  individual  and  general  pros 
perity  had  been  realized  too  suddenly,  and  the  most  fortunate  people 
under  the  sun  were  seized  with  the  belief  that  the  accumulations  in 
the  national  treasury  would  soon  become  unmanageable,  unless  they 
took  early  measures  to  provide  against  its  overflow.  The  economic 
sciolists  were  as  sure  as  they  could  be  of  anything,  that  a  reduction 
of  the  rates  of  duty  to  a  given  percentage  would  reduce  the  revenue 
exactly  as  much.  The  same  party — embracing  the  theorists  who 
learn  all  they  know  by  thinking,  and  those  who  theorize  withou,t 
the  help  of  thought — afterwards  made  up  their  minds  that  the 
lower  duties  yield  the  larger  revenue.  Secretary  Walker,  in  1846, 
built  this  doctrine  into  a  free  trade  axiom.  Secretary  Guthrie  in 
1856  acted  upon  it  as  an  unquestionable  truth,  and  now  their 
lineally  descended  disciples  are  quite  as  sure  that  the  higher  the 
rate  the  larger  the  revenue!  We  have  had  enough  of  this. 

In  1832,  six  or  seven  years  of  adequate  protection  had  passed,  and 
the  time  had  come  for  a  change.  The  terrible  experiences  of  the 
periods  of  free  trade  which  followed  our  first  and  second  war  with 
Great  Britain  were  forgotten.  Stat^gmen  had  arisen  who  knew  not 
George  the  Third.  The  country  had  waxed  fat  as  Jeshurun,  and 
it  was  time  to  kick  the  policy  that  had  "  covered  it  with  fatness." 
South  Carolina  went  iuto  nullification,  Virginia  sanctioned  the 
doctrine;  Alabama  and  Georgia  took  the  same  ground;  Calhoun 
resigned  the  Vice  Presidency;  Ha'yne  and  Webster  made  immortal 
speeches;  the  foreground  candidates  for  the  next  presidency  foresaw 
their  danger ;  and  "  the  Father  of  the  American  system/'  the  "  great 
compromiser,  and  pacificator"  postponed  the  Rebellion,  by  giving 
it  all  that  it  asked  then,  with  a  fairly  implied  promise  of  all  that  it 
might  ask  thereafter,  and  so,  we  took  another  turn  of  the  free  trade 
screw,  in  the  shape  of  the  compromise  act  of  1833. 

Under  this  act,  which   abandoned   the  protection  of  domestic 


200  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

labor,  the  imports,  in  the  first  three  years  of  its  operation,  averaged 
one  hundred  and  twenty-two  millions,  against  an  average  of  seventy 
millions  for  the  last  five  years  of  the  act  of  1828.  At  the  end  of 
1836  there  was  a  surplus  in  the  treasury  of  forty -six  and  a  half 
millions.  Was  not  this  ample  proof  that  lower  duties  yield  the 
larger  revenue  ?  Not  a  word  of  it.  Forty-four  and  a  half  millions 
of  this  amount  came  from  the  sales  of  the  public  lands.  They 
never  before  yielded  more  than  three  millions  in  any  one  year.  In 
1834,  the  first  year  of  the  compromise,  they  yielded  five  millions,  in 
1835  nearly  fifteen,  and  in  1836  nearly  twenty-five  millions.  The 
revenue  from  customs  was  less  in  every  one  of  these  three  years 
than  it  had  been  since  1826. 

A  movement,  collateral  and  concurrent,  ran  along  with  these 
changes  in  the  industrial  policy  of  the  first  three  years  of  reduced 
duties  upon  imports.  At  the  beginning  of  the  year  1834  there  were 
in  circulation  in  the  United  States  ninety-five  millions  of  bank 
notes ;  the  loans  and  discounts  of  the  banks  amounted  to  three  hun 
dred  and  twenty-four  millions;  at  the  close  of  1836  the  bank  circu 
lation  had  swollen  to  one  hundred  and  forty-nine  millions  ;  and  the 
loans  and  discounts  to  above  five  hundred  millions;  an  increase,  in 
each  of  these  particulars,  of  above  fifty  per  cent  in  three  years  !  In 
May,  1837,  the  banks  suspended  specie  payments  all  over  the 
country. 

This  is  the  order  of  the  facts  :  a  sudden  increase  of  imports, 
amounting  to  seventy-five  per  cent;  a  sudden  increase  in  the  bank 
circulation  and  discounts,  amounting  to  above  fifty  per  cent;  a  sud 
den  increase  of  the  sale  of  public  lands,  equal  to  four  hundred  per 
cent,  or,  as  forty-five  millions  to  nine. 

These  facts  mean  this,  and  nothing  else :  an  increase  of  the  im 
ports  called  for  the  increase  of  bank  issues  and  credits,  and  the  labor 
and  capital  previously  employed  in  manufactures  in  the  Eastern 
and  Middle  States,  crowded  out  by  the  influx  of  foreign  goods,  were 
driven  to  the  West  to  seek  investment  and  support.  The  whole 
history  of  the  United  States,  without  an  exceptional  instance,  shows 
that  whenever  the  treasury  was  gorged  by  receipts  from  customs 
and  the  proceeds  of  the  public  lands,  a  money  crisis  was  in  full  press 
ure,  and,  that  a  general  bankruptcy  of  Government,  banks,  and 
people  inevitably  followed.  No  excessive  bank  issues  and  credits 
ever  once  occurred,  or  could  occur,  (previous  to  the  date  of  the 


PROTECTION    AND    FREE    TRADE.  201 

great  Rebellion),  under  a  protective  tariff.  And  we  add  that,  no 
overdealing  in  anything  except  foreign  commodities  can  greatly  or 
even  considerably,  shake  the  finances  of  the  Nation  and  of  the 
people,  simply  because  no  other  sort  of  speculation  or  overtrading, 
be  they  ever  so  wild,  throws  out  of  employment  the  industry  of  the 
country  and  the  capital  associated  with  it  in  production. 

This  proposition  is  commended,  by  the  facts  involved,  to  the  con 
sideration  of  those  who  are  accustomed  to  blame  our  periodic 
revulsions  upon  an  extravagant  credit  inflation,  or  upon  a  depreci 
ated  currency.  Such  revulsions  are  neither  inevitable  nor  inexpli 
cable.  Our  history  exposes  the  causes  plainly,  and  suggests  the 
remedy;  and  what  is  better,  the  means  of  prevention.  Just  give 
our  labor  and  capital  their  well  secured  opportunity  for  maintaining 
the  industrial  independence  of  the  country,  and  we  will  have  no 
more  of  them — under  a  protective  tariff  the  people  can  sustain 
another  war  of  four  years  with  any  foe,  domestic  or  foreign,  and 
another  five  thousand  millions  of  expenditure,  as  they  have  sus 
tained  the  last,  without  one  of  these  "inevitable  and  inexplicable 
revulsions." 

Well,  the  seven  years  of  unprotected  American  industry,  stretch 
ing  from  1833  to  1840,  drove  the  people  once  more  to  reflection, 
and  a  general  revolt  of  the  country  once  more  branded  the  alien 
policy,  turned  its  advocates  out  of  power,  and  replaced  free  trade  by 
the  protective  tariff  of  1842;  which  was  by  far  the  best  one  we  have 
had  to  this  day.  In  four  years  it  had  fully  demonstrated  its  wisdom 
by  extricating  the  country  from  all  its  difficulties,  except  the 
theories  of  the  Revenue  Reformers  of  that  day,  and  the  resistance 
of  that  portion  of  the  Nation  whose  system  of  production  never 
intended  the  labor  of  the  country  for  the  benefit  of  its  laborers,  or 
looked  to  the  prosperity  of  the  Union  for  the  sake  of  the  Union. 
Among  them,  they  modified  the  tariff  of  1842  in  1846,  chiefly  by 
substituting  ad  valorem  for  specific  duties,  for,  this  mode  of  assess 
ing  imposts  opens  the  door  for  all  sorts  of  frauds,  especially  those  of 
undervaluation  in  the  invoices,  and  the  equally  dangerous  device  of 
temporary  underselling,  even  at  a  loss,  for  the  sake  of  crushing  out 
the  competing  home  industry  which  the  imports  must  meet  in  the 
invaded  market.  Still,  the  tariff  of  1846  was  discriminative  in  its 
schedules,  and  protective  in  its  rates,  in  spite  of  the  vices  incident  to 
its  administration;  and  the  Nation's  boundless  energy  and  resources 
14 


202  QUESTIONS    OP    THE    DAY. 

fought  the  good  fight  under  it  with  an  average  of  advantages.  A 
succession  of  lucky  chances  fell  in  to  corroborate  it — the  general 
scarcity  in  Western  Europe,  followed  by  the  famine  of  1848;  the 
discovery  of  gold  in  California,  in  1848-9 ;  the  Crimean  war  in 
1854-56 ;  a  tripled  export  of  domestic  productions,  occasioned,  in 
part,  by  an  accidental  foreign  demand,  but  mainly  by  an  exhaustive 
enterprise  in  the  product  of  cotton  and  tobacco  for  exportation, 
which  in  ten  years  advanced  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  and  forty 
millions  per  annum;  and  above  all,  the  indomitable  enterprise  of 
the  people — all  these  together  brought  about  such  a  measure  of 
general  prosperity,  that  the  old  enemy  found  its  opportunity  in  a 
full  treasury  for  another  assault,  and  a  successful  one,  upon  the 
policy  which  always  exposes  itself  by  its  very  successes  to  the 
charge  of  having  accomplished  its  object  and  fulfilled  its  mission. 
Accordingly,  a  twenty-five  per  cent  reduction  of  the  duties  was 
effected  in  1857,  and  was  followed,  necessarily,  by  another  sudden 
increase  of  imports,  with  another  suspension  of  specie  payments  at 
its  heels.  The  imports  for  consumption  now  went  up  to  $11.82  per 
head  of  the  population  from  $5.42,  or  to  more  than  double  the 
average  at  which  they  stood  in  1846;  and  the  bank  circulation  and 
loans,  following,  naturally,  were  also  something  more  than  doubled 
— the  loans  rising  from  three  hundred  and  twelve  to  six  hundred 
and  thirty-four  millions,  and  the  circulation  from  one  hundred  and 
five  to  two  hundred  and  fourteen  millions,  which  was  not  only  a 
doubling  of  aggregate  amounts  but  left  a  margin  that  nearly  doubled 
the  per  capita  average  of  the  increased  numbers  of  the  population 
— another  instance  for  the  deception  of  the  bullionists,  but  another 
proof  that  credit  and  currency  inflation  always  follows  excessive 
importations.  The  public  debt  in  the  mean  time  had  gone  up  from 
sixteen  and  three-quarters  to  twenty-nine  millions,  and  rose,  still 
further,  to  sixty- four  millions  in  1860  under  the  tariff  of  1857. 

Judging  by  all  the  experience  of  the  past,  the  short  suspension 
of  September  1857,  would  have  been  followed  in  1861  by  a 
general  explosion,  if  that  other  grand  result  of  free  trade,  the  great 
civil  war,  had  not  come  down  upon  us  and  broken  up  the  rule 
of  all  financial  precedents.  The  imports  per  capita  in  1836,  the 
year  preceding  the  great  revulsion  of  1837,  were  $10.93;  in  the 
year  preceding  that  of  1857  they  were  $10.88;  and  now,  in  1860, 
they  had  risen  to  $10.80,  an  amount  which,  under  non-protective 


PROTECTION  AND  FREE  TRADE.  203 

tariffs,  always  insured  the  return  of  the  "  inevitable  and  inex 
plicable  "  plague  within  a  twelvemonth. 

In  1S61,  and  as  yet,  for  the  last  time,  another  turn  of  the  tide 
concurred  with  the  outbreak  of  the  Rebellion,  as  the  like  return  of 
the  redeeming  and  corrective  policy  of  protection  always  came,  to 
meet  and  repair  the  ravages  of  the  free  trade  system.  It  gave  us  the 
Morrill  tariff,  and  that,  with  its  amendments,  raising  the  rates  upon 
duty-paying  imports  to  nearly  the  average  of  the  tariff  of  1828, 
put  us  through  the  civil  war,  and  for  six  years  of  peace  has 
averted  a  collapse  of  our  credit,  and  sustained  our  labor  enterprise, 
to  the  extent  and  with  the  fullness  of  effect,  that  has  in  all  past 
times  aroused  the  resistance  which  never  misses  its  opportunity. 
With  a  debt  of  twenty-three  hundred  millions  upon  us,  the  Treasury 
is  overflowing.  From  customs  more  than  equal  in  amount  to  all  other 
sources  of  public  revenue  during  the  last  two  years,  the  Treasury 
has  paid  of  the  principal  of  the  public  debt  above  two  hundred 
millions,  besides  bearing  all  other  charges,  and,  accordingly,  free 
trade  is  again  rampant  and  resolute  and  armed,  as  of  yore,  with  all 
its  favorite  arguments  for  such  a  reduction  of  duties  on  imports  as 
they  think  the  Treasury  can  spare.  Again,  the  goose  that  lays  the 
golden  eggs  has  grown  so  fat  that  she  is  just  ready  for  the  spit ! 

Under  the  conviction  that  history  rightly  rendered  is  philosophy 
teaching  by  experience,  this  brief  sketch  of  the  effective  and 
instructive  points  in  our  frequent  and  violent  contrasts  of  policy  is 
submitted  as  a  study  for  candjd  inquirers.  Its  details  would 
greatly  strengthen  our  argument,  but  we  have  been  compelled  to 
confine  the  narrative  to  the  facts  and  figures  which  are  the  sum 
maries  and  the  interpreters  of  the  particulars. 


CHAPTER    XV. 

DOCTRINE    AND    POLICY    OF    PROTECTION. 

What  Protection  Js  and  what  it  intends. — In  its  exactest  sense  it  is  Defense. — 
Domesttcmdustries  encouraged  by  other  means  than  protection  strictly  implies 
and  employs.T-vBo^iuses,  market  monopolies,  and  countervailing  duties  not  of 
its  essence,  nor  embraced  in  its  policy. — Bonuses  employed  by  Colbert — their 
difficulties  and  dangers. — Government,  subsidies  not  of  its  system  nor  em 
braced  in  the  principle. — The  protective^  principle  vitiated  by  the  spirit  of 
countervailing  duties,  and  practically  weakened  or  destroyed. — The  British 
system,  repudiating  protective,  adopts  countervailing,  duties — a  change  of  terms 
to  cover  an  unchanged  policy. — Henry  Clay  and  his  compeers  led  astray  by 
accepting  and  substituting  them  for  the  substantive,  self-supporting,  and 
unconditional  doctrine  of  protection  proper. — Principles_^nji  _aims  _of  protec 
tion  defined,  and  its  subjects  and  operations  ascertarne4- and  limited. — It  is 
not  taxation. — It  recognizes  no  distinction  between  luxuries  and  common 
necessaries  of  life. — Its  spirit  refuses  invidious  classifications  of  society. — 
Duties  that  are  not  defensive  are  taxes  under  another  name — they  are  foreign 
to  protection. — The  rule  of  taxation  is  by  ad  valorem  assessments. — Protection 
has  no  regard  to  values,  and  refuses  the  ad  valorem  rule. — Ad  valqreim,  in 
customs  duties,  infamous  for  their  frauds,  perjuries,  inequality  of  operation, 
and  treachery  to  the  interests  of  home  labor — everywhere  avoided,  except 
when  employed  to  defeat  protection. — The  Prussian  Zollverein  in  striking 
illustration. — Protection  is  not  adverse  to  foreign  trade  in  principle  or  opera 
tion — it  allows  and  favors  supplementary  commerce,  and  restricts  only  injuri- 
ou-ly  competitive  trade. — It  does  not  look  to  revenue,  but  it  does,  incidentally, 
secure  it. — The  system  in  our  history  entitles  it  to  be  described,  a  tariff  for  pro 
tection  with  incidental,  but  always  abundant,  revenue. — The  finance  tables  of 
the  Treasury  Department  show  that  "  revenue  tariffs"  always,  before  the  Rebel 
lion,  failed  to  supply  revenue,  and  that  protective  tariffs  always  met  the 
expenditures  of  the  Government. — Our  highest  rates  of  duty  have  given  us 
the  largest  foreign  trade — in  I860,  under  an  average  of  nineteen  per  cent  upon 
the  dutiable  imports,  only  two  hundred  and  eighty  millions  worth  imported; 
under  a  forty-six  per  cent  duty,  in  1870,  the  imports  rose  to  four  hundred  and 
fifteen  millions. — English  superiority,  excludes  manufactured  goods,  yet  her 
imports  have  swollen  from  seven  hundred  and  forty  to  thirteen  hundred  and 
thirty-three  million  of  dollars  in  ten  years. — The  tariff  rates  of  France  almost 
prohibited  foreign  manufactures,  yet  commerce  rose  two  and  a  half  times  in 
twenty  years. — The  adage,  "  if  you  don't  buy  you  cannot  sell,"  a  plausible 
sophistry  as  applied  to  American  trade. — Protection  intends  the  utmost  possi- 
204 


THEORY    AND    POLICY    OF   PROTECTION.  205 

ble  diversification  of  the  Nation's  industries. — Argument  of  the  free  trade 
authorities  for  confining  the  United  States  to  the  production  of  provisions  and 
raw  materials. — Different  educational  and  pecuniary  value  of  different  kinds  of 
labor. — Changed  condition  of  laborers  in  modern  production. — The  necessity  of 
preserving  the  whole  range  of  choice  among  the  varied  industries,  in  order  to 
give  employment  to  every  variety  of  powers  and  faculties. — Special  interest  of 
women  in  the  reserve  of  labor  suitable  to  the  sex. — Extent  to  which  they  were 
found  capable  of  the  manufacturing  arts  in  1860. — The  concessions  of  social 
and  political  power  in  expectation,  demand  a  special  care  in  securing  for  them 
the  largest  range  of  industrial  employments. — They  must  be  either  in  the  self- 
supporting,  the  dependent,  or  the  dangerous  class  of  the  community. — The  freed- 
men  of  the  South  must  have  opportunity  to  enter  the  occupations  of  skilled 
labor,  or  go  back  to  the  drudgeries  to  which  slavery  formerly  confined  them. 
Already  their  labor  has  gorged  the  cotton  market,  its  price  has  nearly 
touched  the  In  west  which  it  ever  reached,  and  wages  must  go  down  with  it. — 
A  diversified,  which  must  be  a  protected,  range  of  industries  equally  necessary 
to  our  women  and  negroes. 

IT  is  in  place  now  to  state  what  Protection  is,  and  what  it  intends. 
The  treatment  of  this  topic,  however  brief,  will  necessarily  embrace 
a  notice  of  the  policy,  as  it  has  been  tried  in  other  countries,  under 
modification  of  their  varied  conditions. 

The  force  and  value  of  Protection  in  its  essential,  its  operative 
sense,  is  fully  covered  by  the  word  defense.  This  is  more  and  better 
than  a  mere  synonym — it  measures  the  meaning  of  the  word,  and  it 
restricts  the  principle  exactly  to  the  province  of  its  rightful  rule. 
Protection  does  encourage  and  foster  the  industries  to  which  it  is 
applied,  but,  encouragement  sometimes  embraces  bonuses,  extended 
by  the  government,  or  exclusive  privileges  of  the  market  secured  to 
industrial  enterprise,  or  other  exceptional  forms  of  favor,  which  are 
not  simply  defensive  against  foreign  competition.  Sometimes  pro 
tection  takes  the  shape  of  countervailing  duties,  imposed  to  retaliate 
foreign  legislation  adverse  to  the  domestic  exports  of  the  country 
adopting  them.  The  first  of  these  forms  of  encouragement  is  liable 
to  serious  objections,  in  most  of  the  instances  in  which  it  is  employed, 
and,  at  best,  requires  extraordinary  skill  and  discrimination  in  its  use. 
Colbert,  the  great  finance  minister  of  Louis  XIV.,  gave,  from  the 
national  treasury,  two  thousand  livres  to  each  loom  put  to  work,  for 
the  purpose  of  establishing  the  system  of  textile  manufactures,  which 
took  its  origin,  and  owed  its  great  and  enduring  success,  to  that  and 
other  effective  forms  of  support.  The  like  policy  has  been,  in  a  multi 
tude  of  instances,  followed  by  the  governments  of  Europe;  and,  liable 
as  the  measure  was  in  its  nature  to  abuse,  and  abused  as  it  generally 


206  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

was,  it  has  since  fallen  into  general  reprobation.  It  often  was  "  class 
legislation"  in  an  offensive  form,  and  is  only  allowed  now  under 
cover  of  some  other  pretext  which  gives  it  protection:  such  as 
subsidies,  under  the  guise  of  contracts  for  carrying  the  mails  at  sea; 
or  gifts  of  public  lands  and  the  loan  of  the  national  credit,  to  rail 
road  corporations  for  the  construction  of  highways  for  the  carriage 
of  the  mails,  and  military  transportation  in  the  deserts,  and  over  the 
Rocky  Mountains  of  the  United  States.  Of  this  system  of  govern 
ment  aids  to  private  enterprises,  we  have  nothing  now  to  say.  except 
that  it  is  not  that  protection  of  the  common  interests  of  the  com 
munity  which  is  strictly  defensive  in  its  essence;  and,  while  we  take 
no  present  exceptions  to  it,  we  also  abstain  from  making  any  defense 
for  it;  it  is  not  Protection,  in  our  sense  of  the  term,  or  our  meaning 
of  the  thing.  It  is  broadly  distinguished  by  the  circumstance  that 
it  means  money  paid  out  of  the  treasury  to  the  benefit  of  specific 
enterprises,  and  is  not  general,  uniform,  and  equitable,  in  its  opera 
tion,  unless  made  so  indirectly  by  the  wisdom,  impartiality,  and 
diffusive  beneficence  of  the  grant;  of  which,  by  the  way,  it  is  very 
hard  to  be  sufficiently  assured. 

The  principle  of  countervailing  duties  is  indeed  defensive  and 
protective,  but  in  a  narrowly  limited  range.  While  England  legis 
lated  in  an  unfriendly  spirit  upon  the  interests  of  our  domestic 
exports  and  maritime  trade,  the  spirit  of  resistance  to  aggression 
swallowed  up  the  true  principle  of  protection.  The  popular  argu 
ment,  then  most  effective,  turned  upon  this  retaliatory  aspect  of  the 
policy;  and,  when  the  evil  was  tolerably  well  abated,  protection, 
proper,  had  lost  its  support  by  the  loss  of  its  accidental  and  non-essen 
tial  provocation.  England,  about  forty  years  ago,  finding  her  policy  of 
foreign  trade  endangered  by  the  existence  of  the  protection  system 
of  other  countries,  whom  she  needed  as  customers,  and  requiring  no 
further  protection  of  her  own  home  markets  against  foreign  compe 
tition  in  them,  gave  up  the  name  and  opposed  the  policy,  but  retained 
so  much  of  it,  nevertheless,  as  her  interests  demanded,  under  the 
name  of  countervailing  duties.  Thus  she  now  protects  her  manu 
factures  of  tobacco,  spirits,  and  sugar,  by  a  system  of  duties  upon 
their  import,  equivalent  to  a  barrier  of  fifty  millions  of  dollars  a 
year,  against  their  introduction  from  abroad.  These  duties  are  not 
adopted  to  counteract  or  punish  any  foreign  nation's  tariffs  upon  any 
of  her  exports,  but  to  equalize  the  excise  duties  which  the  govern- 


THEORY    AND    POLICY/OF    PROTECTION.  207 

ment  lays  upon  the  domestic  production  of  the  kinds  of  articles  so 
charged. 

If  British  free-traders  will  not  allow  us  to  call  a  fifty-million 
charge,  upon  these  manufactures,  over  and  above  the  imposts  laid 
upon  the  raw  materials,  protective,  because  they  are  only  intended 
to  countervail  her  own  internal  taxes  upon  the  like  articles,  we  may 
be  allowed  to  exclude  the  term  from  our  definition  of  protective 
duties,  proper.  Our  principal  and  sufficient  reason,  however,  is  that 
protection,  passing  under  this  name,  confuses  our  reasonings,  and, 
besides,  falls  mischievously  short  of  the  true  principle  and  purpose 
of  defensive  duties  upon  imported  goods.  We  might,  indeed, 
effectually  retort  the  English  dodge  by  employing  the  phrase  to 
cover  the  difference  between  us,  in  the  cost  of  labor,  the  interest  of 
capital,  and  the  heavy  burden  of  our  domestic  taxes  upon  produc 
tion,  and  call  the  import  duties,  riot. protective,  but  countervailing 
to  the  great  advantages  our  rivals  ht)ld  over  us  in  our  home  markets 
under  an  untaxed  trade  in  their  competing  commodities;  but  we 
prefer  the  downright  and  direct  avowal  of  the  principle,  and  the 
frank  maintenance  of  the  policy  essentially  belonging  to  it.  More 
over,  we  remember  how  unwisely  the  very  ablest  advocates  of  "The 
American  System,"  in  the  earlier  days  of  Clay  and  Webster,  and 
before  England  had  adopted  free  trade,  threw  their  force  upon  the 
merely  counteractive  feature  of 'the  policy,  and  we  are  sure  that, 
turning  the  argument  for  protection  upon  the  pivot  of  countervailing 
duties,  damaged  the  principle  greatly  when  their  particular  provo 
cation  was  removed.  Countervailing  legislation  could  find  its  reasons 
only  in  the  practice  of  foreign  countries,  and  however  well  justified, 
still  made  the  true  principle  depend  upon  an  accident,  or  a  caprice, 
or  a  mistake  of  governments  over  which  we  had  no  control.  It  was 
a  resting  of  our  separate  and  independent  rights  upon  the  aggressive 
wrongs  of  our  enemies,  while  they  kept  that  injurious  attitude 
towards  us;  but  did  nothing  for  the  maintenance  of  those  rights, 
when  the  injury  took  a  different  form.  They  need  defense,  by  their 
intrinsic  necessities,  let  foreigners  infringe  them  in  whatever  manner 
they  may  choose. 

By  protection  we  mean  needed  defense  of  industrial  enterprises 
whose  success  is  the  common  interest  of  the  community.  We  do 
not  mean  "  class  legislation,"  or  the  establishment  of  monopolies  in 
production  or  trade,  but  the  development  of  the  productive  power  of 


208  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

the  Nation,  with  a  due  distribution  of  its  benefits  to  every  industrial 
interest  of  the  whole  people.  Protection  means,  first,  freedom  of 
industry  and  trade  at  home,  and  eventually,  free  foreign  trade.  It 
must  have  nothing  in  it  of  the  spirit  of  war,  either  between  classes 
of  interest  at  home,  or  with  the  nations  abroad.  It  is  a  law  of 
national  welfare,  and  as  a  law  it  intends  liberty,  and  cannot  employ 
any  form  of  compulsion,  except  for  its  defense  and  maintenance. 
The  spirit  of  justice  and  peace  which  pervades  and  rules  it,  requires 
that  in  the  selection  of  enterprises  to  be  fostered,  the  legislature 
shall  be  guided  by  the  same  prudence  that  governs  a  man  in  giving 
credit,  or  other  aid,  to  his  neighbor  entering  upon  a  new  business, 
or  embarrassed  in  an  old  one — the  fair  probability  that  he  will  in 
due  time  be  able  to  make  himself  independent  of  such  assistance, 
and  fully  repay  to  the  helper  all  his  advances — that  is,  the  enter 
prise  must  be  practicable,  promising,  timely,  and  generally  beneficial;^ 
else  it  is  not  a  case  to  be  so  assisted,  and  is  not  entitled  to  the  favor. 

As  no  favoritism  to  classes  must  be  indulged,  so,  no  hostility  to 
any  class  can  be  allowed.  For  this  reason,  the  notion  that  luxuries 
should  bear  higher  duties  than  articles  of  common  necessity,  has 
nothing  of  the  proper  policy  of  protection  to  industry  in  it.  nor, 
indeed,  has  it  anything  else  to  recommend  it  to  the  acceptance  of 
the  masses,  but  the  contrary. 

Protection  is  totally  misunderstood,  and  fatally  abused,  when  it 
is  reasoned  upon,  or  employed,  as  identical  with  taxation.  It 
means  and  intends  the  protection  of  domestic  labor,  skill  and 
enterprise,  and  of  the  capital  which  they  employ.  These  are 
not  benefited  by  a  tax,  under  the  name  of  an  import  duty, 
upon  such  luxuries  of  manufacture  or  of  agriculture  as  the  country 
cannot  produce  for  its  consumption.  Invidious  distinctions  in 
a  tariff  of  customs  between  the  consumption  of  the  rich  and 
of  the  poor,  have  no  help  in  them  for  the  labor  of  the  poor. 
Moreover,  those  things  are  usually  classed  as  luxuries  which  the 
poor  cannot  well  afford  to  purchase.  To  burden  them  distinctively 
is  simply  to  put  them  still  further  out  of  the  reach  of  the  poor;  and 
like  all  other  prejudices  of  classes,  it  only  operates  to  the  injury 
of  the  weaker  party,  and  under  the  guise  of  a  preference  for  the 
common  people,  really  keeps  up  the  worst  of  aristocratic  distinctions 
— those  which  touch  the  most  general  interests  of  social  life.  Tea 
and  coffee  were  treated  by  our  revenue  laws  as  luxuries  until  the- 


THEORY    AND    POLICY    OF    PROTECTION.  209 

protective  principle  set  them  free  of  duty  in  1832.  So  soon  as  they 
went  into  the  free  list,  they  became  the  common  fare  of  every  cot 
tage  in  the  country.  Coffee  for  the  twenty  previous  }Tears  was  taxed 
five  cents  per  pound ;  and  teas,  from  fourteen  to  sixty-eight  cents, 
according  to  quality.  These  duties  were  taxes,  pure  and  simple,  for 
they  did  not  protect  any  American  industry.  Since  then  we  have 
imported  for  consumption  as  much  as  seven  pounds  of  coffee  per 
head  of  the  total  population,  or  nearly  twice  as  much  for  the  actual 
consumers.  What  would  the  laboring  people  have  gained  by  paying 
about  three-fourths  of  the  annual  ten  millions  of  duties,  under  the 
old  rule,  upon  the  article,  in  order  to  tax  it  as  a  luxury  ?  Or  what 
would  they  have  gained  by  confining  themselves  to  inferior  teas,  at 
fourteen  cents  a  pound  duty,  in  order  to  make  wealthy  people  pay 
sixty-eight  cents  on  theirs  ?  If  we  apply  this  doctrine  of  luxury  to 
silks  or  furs  or  any  other  article  of  dress  which  we  do  not  produce, 
its  effect  would  be  that  the  wife  and  daughters  of  the  man  of  mod 
erate  means,  when  they  go  into  the  street  or  to  church,  must  betray 
the  economy  which  his  circumstances  compel.  Protection,  ruled  by 
equity  and  tending  to  equality,  is  guilty  of  no  such  misdemeanors 
as  this.  When  taxing  is  the  object  for  the  uses  of  revenue,  lay  it 
on  wherever  it  should  be  borne,  and  in  reference  to  the  ability  to 
bear  it,  but  never  allow  the  idea  to  enter  a  tariff  for  protection  ;  and 
this  for  other  reasons  which  will  hereafter  appear. 

While  upon  this  point,  the  essential  distinction  between  taxes  and 
protective  duties,  we  must  be  indulged  with  a  word  upon  the  man 
ner  and  rule  of  assessing  protective  duties. 

In  levying  internal  taxes,  or  taxes  upon  imports  for  the  support 
of  Government,  the  ad  valorem  rule  of  assessment  distributes  the 
burden  equitably  upon  all  the  various  species  of  taxable  property. 
A  fixed  percentage,  according  to  valuation,  covers  fairly  and  uni 
formly  all  its  subjects,  the  intention  being,  that  every  property 
holder  shall  contribute  to  the  support  of  the  Government  in  propor 
tion  to  his  means,  and  every  consumer  in  proportion  to  his  con 
sumption,  when  unhappily  the  public  exigencies  require  such  an 
extension  of  its  demand.  The  ad  valorem  rule  with  its  universality 
of  range,  has  no  place  in  the  policy  of  protection.  To  admit  it  in 
the  assessment  of  duties  is  to  sweep  away  the  whole  doctrine  of  pro 
tection.  Free  traders  are  its  consistent  advocates.  To  give  it  any 
influence  whatever  in  our  reasonings  upon  protection  is  to  confound 


210  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

and  vitiate  the  whole  process.  The  enemy  has  sown  these  tares  in 
our  field  while  we  slept,  and  must  not  be  allowed  to  reproach  us 
with  the  faults  of  the  harvest.  Previous  to  1846,  ad  valorems  were 
not  tolerated  in  our  tariffs,  wherever  they  could  be  avoided;  and 
when  protection  true  and  earnest  was  restored,  in  1861,  specific 
duties  were  restored,  not  extensively  enough,  indeed,  but  with  a 
resolute  purpose  to  avoid  the  departures  from  principle  in  fixing  the 
rates,  and  the  never-absent  frauds,  of  the  ad  valorem  system — 
frauds  by  which  the  industry  of  the  country  is  cheated  of  its 
defenses,  and  the  treasury  of  its  revenues,  and  all  honest  importers 
are  discounted  disastrously  by  their  unscrupulous  rivals  in  trade. 
They  offer  a  premium  to  dishonesty;  they  falsify  invoices ;  they  pay 
for  perjury  m  the  custom  house;  they  make  semi-smugglery  a 
policy  of  trade,  and  demoralize  the  whole  merchant  class  by  dis 
couraging  and  fining  truth  and  integrity  heavily.  They  are  every 
way  fitted,  in  purpose  and  practice,  for  defeating  protection,  and  are, 
accordingly,  a  prime  principle  of  free  trade.  England,  having  respect 
only  to  her  revenue,  and  fair  play  among  her  own  importers,  scouts 
ad  valorems  from  her  lists  of  impost  duties.  When  she  was 
deriving  twenty  millions  of  pounds  from  customs,  she  took  but  one 
quarter  of  a  million  in  ad  valorems,  and  such  were  their  inherent 
and  inseparable  frauds,  that  parliament  appointed  a  committee  to  rid 
the  customs  schedules  of  every  possible  vestige  of  them.  This 
committee  indicated  its  object  and  intention,  by  charging  artificial 
flowers  by  the  cubic  feet  in  the  box  containing  them;  overlooking 
all  differences  of  value,  to  escape  the  frauds  of  undervaluation.  Not 
a  government  on  earth  that  knows  what  it  is  about,  gives  them  any 
toleration ;  and  especially  those  which  intend  protection  repudiate 
them  just  as  they  do  free  trade  in  any  other  disguise. 

One  of  these  disguises,  and  the  most  insidious  of  them,  takes  the 
shape  of  what  is  called  among  us,  "a  tariff  for  revenue  with  inci 
dental  protection,"  assessed  upon  imports  by  the  ad  valorem  rule. 
In  this  form,  even  when  stripped  of  their  other  inherent  frauds, 
their  malignant  hostility  to  the  protection  which  is  intended  or 
pretended,  is  conspicuously  manifest.  Their  workings  are  after  this 
fashion  :  when  the  prices  of  foreign  goods  are  so  high  that  little  or 
no  protection  against  them  is  required,  the  duty  per  cent  upon  such 
value  carries  up  the  prices  to  an  absurd  extent,  and  protectnm  is 
mocked  with  the  aid  it  does  not  need,  and  charged  with  an  exorbi- 


THEORY    AND    POLICY    OF    PROTECTION.  211 

tance  which  it  did  not  intend;  and,  when  prices  go  down  the  duties 
go  down  with  them,  and  protection  altogether  fails  just  where  it  is 
needed.  Another  feature  of  their  mischievous  principle  is,  that 
they  make  the  government  a  party  and  an  accomplice  when  by  un 
derselling,  the  foreigner  aims  at  crushing  out  a  domestic  industry. 
Then  the  price  is  put  ruinously  low  and  the  ad  valorem  duty  goes 
down  in  the  like  proportion,  thus  making  the  tariff  itself  a  full 
partner  in  the  trick.  The  steel  rail  manufacture  newly  introduced 
in  the  United  States,  affords  a  clear  example  of  the  vice  of  which 
the  foreign  enemy  so  easily  avails  himself. 

Protection  aims  at  and  addresses  all  its  measures  and  methods  to 
the  defense  of  the  industry  employed  in  the  production  of  a  com 
modity,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  its  market  value.  It  confronts 
the  importer  with  the  purpose  to  secure  the  right  of  domestic  labor 
in  the  production  of  the  article  against  all  its  disadvantages,  and  lays 
on  any  amount  of  duty  that  will  do  that. 

The  Prussian  Zollverein  is,  and  ever  has  been,  purely  protective. 
In  the  earlier  years  of  its  operation  it  charged  cotton  goods,  without 
any  respect  to  quality  or  value,  thirty-two  dollars  and  twenty-five 
cents  upon  every  hundred  pounds  weight  imported.  The  effect  of 
this  specific  duty  was  that  coarse  shirting  paid  the  equivalent  of 
ninety  per  cent  upon  its  invoice  value ;  superior  shirting  paid  only 
thirty-two  and  a  half  per  cent,  and  fine  printed  cottons  were  admitted 
at  eight  and  three-fourths  per  cent.  The  Zollverein  intended  pro 
tection  and  not  revenue.  It  took  care  of  its  infant  manufactures 
effectually,  by  the  heaviest  duties,  and  properly  abstained  from 
taxing  those  goods  which  its  laborers  were  not  yet  able  to  produce. 
It  did  not  exclude  those  finer  goods  from  its  markets,  nor  its  com 
mon  people  from  their  use.  On  the  same  principle,  and  with  the 
same  purpose,  it  charged  all  kinds  of  cutlery  at  a  uniform  rate,  by 
the  pound,  letting  in  razors,  penknives,  and  the  like  fine  wares  at  a 
merely  nominal  rate,  and  laying  the  protective  stress  upon  hatchets, 
axes,  and  a  great  variety  of  hardware,  which'*  the  Germans  were  able, 
under  sufficient  defense  against  Great  Britain,  to  manufacture  for 
themselves.  This  was  protection  pure  and  simple,  and  the  result 
was,  as  the  Germans  advanced  in  skill  from  one  stage  to  another 
they  found  the  specific  rat§s  of  each  successive  stage  sufficiently  pro 
tective,  though  constantly  declining  in  ad  valorem  rates,  until  in 
the  end,  which  was  steadily  and  persistently  guarded,  German 


212  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

cutlery  attained  superiority  in  quality  and  greater  cheapness  in  price 
than  the  foreign  articles,  which  if  admitted  under  inadequate  pro 
tective  duties,  or,  under  a  revenue  tariff  system,  would  have  crushed 
the  enterprise  of  the  people  in  the  bud.  Germany,  to  day,  shows 
what  her  fifty  years  of  fostered  and  defended  industry  could  do  for 
a  people  so  low  in  the  scale  of  European  powers,  that  her  fortresses 
were  garrisoned  with  French  troops  and  her  territory  under  French 
dominion,  till  England,  that  had  been  subsidizing  her  through  the 
Continental  wars,  finally  overthrew  Napoleon  the  First  at  Waterloo, 
as  Germany  has  just  now  overthrown  his  nephew  at  Sedan.  But 
we  are  running  again  into  history,  in  the  develop7iient  of  a  theoretic 
principle,  because  truths  that  have  working  force  in  them  always 
tend  to  the  facts  which  vindicate  them. 

The  system  of  protection  employs,  exclusively,  duties  upon  im 
ports  to  effect  its  objects;  and,  intending  only  to  defend  domestic 
industry,  it  properly  selects  for  its  operation  only  those  foreign  pro 
ducts  which  compete  with  the  freedom  and  extension  of  such 
domestic  industries  as  the  country  is  prepared"  to  undertake  with 
the  view  of  self  supply.  It  is  not  arrayed  against  foreign  trade  and 
exchanges  in  anything  else  than  those  commodities  whose  admission 
injures  the  labor  and  prevents  the  enjoyment  of  the  home  market. 
Wisely  devised  and  worked,  it  never  does  in  any  respect,  nor  to  any 
degree,  repress  or  diminish  any  healthful  foreign  commerce.  Its 
legitimate  object  is  to  preserve  for  the  people  an  unlimited  choice  of 
occupations  fitted  to  their  economic  conditions.  It  will  not  forbid  or 
burden  the  importation  of  wheat  into  territories  incapable  of  pro 
ducing  such  grain,  nor  will  it  tax  any  amount  of  importation  of 
such  grain  or  any  of  its  substitutes,  which  supply  its  own  defici 
encies,  unless  where  such  an  import  represses  its  own  production. 
The  rule  of  the  principle  is  to  freely  allow  and  favor  all  really  sup 
plementary  trade,  and  to  oppose  none  but  such  as  is  injuriously 
competitive.  Looking  steadily  to  the  fullest  employment  of  its  own 
labor,  and  the  greatest  practicable  development  of  its  native 
resources,  including  raw  materials,  available  capital,  skill  and 
enterprise,  and  their  most  judicious  enhancement,  it  turns  away 
from  all  other  aims  and  avoids  all  their  embarrassments;  and  it  has 
nothing  to  do  with  market  prices  except  as  these  affect  productive 
power  and  act  upon  consumption. 

If,  owing  to  the  circumstances  of  the  country,  a  tariff  of  pro- 


THEORY    AND   POLICY    OF    PROTECTION.  213 

tective  duties  can  also  be  made  to  secure  an  adequate,  or  any  con 
siderable,  amount  of  revenue  to  the  government,  the  principle  and 
policy  of  the  system  freely  allows  such  an  excellent  accompani 
ment  as  a  consequence  of  its  own  necessary  operation  ;  and  it  is  a 
striking  characteristic  of  the  system  that  it  always  does  do  so.  As 
long  as  the  circumstances  of  any  nation  require  the  imposition  of 
duties  upon  foreign  merchandise  for  the  defense  of  its  own  imma 
ture  or  otherwise  embarrassed  productive  forces,  and  just  so  long,  it 
also  pays  its  proceeds  into  the  national  exchequer.  Only  when,  as 
in  England,  protection  is  no  longer  necessary,  and  its  levies,  there 
fore,  fail,  does  protection  fail  to  replenish  the  public  treasury.  In 
proof,  so  far  as  'our  own  experience  is  concerned,  it  is  a  striking 
fact  that,  every  period  of  sound  protection  which  we  have  enjoyed, 
has  amply  provided  for  the  national  expenditure,  and  only  the 
tariffs  constructed  with  the  sole  or  principal  view  to  securing 
revenue  have  utterly  failed  to  accomplish  that  intention.  Any 
expert  in  statistics  acquainted  with  the  concurrent  events,  need  but 
to  glance  over  the  column  headed  "  Customs"  in  the  general  table 
of  treasury  receipts  from  the  year  1791  to  I860,  to  see  the  clearest 
proof  of  this  fact.  He  will  invariably  find  that  the  first  and  second 
years  of  every  free  trade  tariff  are  marked  by  a  sudden  increase  of  the 
amount  of  these  duties,  with  a  rapid  decline  thereafter,  till  the  end 
of  the  period,  at  which  the  deficit  of  receipts  marks  the  utter 
failure  of  all  such  tariffs  to  provide  a  sufficient  revenue  for  the 
ordinary  expenses  of  the  government;  and  he  will  see, also,  a  regu 
lar  rise  and  steady  sufficiency  of  customs  for  the  uses  of  the  gov 
ernment  from  the  second  year  and  through  each  succeeding  year  of 
the  protective  tariffs,  until  such  amplitude  of  exchequer  supplies  is 
again  destroyed  by  its  wretchedly  delusive  successor,  designed  to 
provide  revenue  only,  or,  in  some  cases,  "  revenue  with  incidental 
protection." 

I  ask  no  man  to  accept  my  statement  of  this  instructive  history 
gratuitously  j  let  him  study  the  subject  for  himself;  and,  it  is  not 
too  much  to  ask  him  to  do  so,  before  he  ever  again  talks  of  a 
" revenue  tariff"  as  something  different  in  rates  and  subjects  from 
a  truly  and  permanently  protective  one,  as  concerns  the  finances  of 
our  own  country  in  its  past  history  or  its  present  condition.* 

*  Under  the  unprotective  tariff  of  1816  the  customs  went  down  from  thirty- 
six  millions  in  that  year  to  thirteen  millions  in  1821;  under  the  protective  tariff 


214  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

Some  of  the  propositions  here  so  briefly  presented  for  the  pur 
pose  of  describing  the  principles  and  aims  of  the  system,  demand 
something  further  in  their  exposition. 

We  have  said  that  protection  is  not  restrictive  of  foreign  trade — 
and  we  mean  to  say  this  both  with  respect  to  the  money  and  the 
economic  value  of  such  international  commerce  as  a  true  policy 
provides  fur. 

On  this  point  it  is  in  itself  conclusive  of  all  debate  to  refer  to 
the  fact  that  in  1860  the  highest  value  of  foreign  imports  was 
reached.  The  dutiable  goods  imported  in  that  year  amounted  to 
two  hundred  and  eighty  millions,  under  an  average  rate  of  nineteen 
per  cent.  This  was  commerce  under  free  trade.  In  the  year  1870 
the  dutiable  imports  had  risen  to  four  hundred  and  fifteen  and 
three-quarters  millions,  at  an  average  rate  of  forty-six  and  three- 
eighths  per  cent.  Here  we  have  a  system  of  duties  two  and  a  half 
times  higher,  allowing  or  inducing  an  importation  within  a  fraction 
of  one  and  a  half  times  greater  than  under  the  lower  rates ! 

This  is  a  sufficient  refutation  of  the  charge  that  protective  duties 
are  restrictive  of  foreign  trade,  so  far  as  the  United  States  in  their 
economic  conditions  are  concerned.  But  the  same  thing  is  just  as 
true  of  all  nations,  in  all  possible  differences  of  conditions.  We 
will  take  an  extreme  case :  The  English  authorities;  led  by  J.  R. 

of  1824  and  1828  they  rose  to  twenty-nine  millions  in  1833,  rising  steadily  and 
gradually  with  the  growth  of  the  general  prosperity.  Under  the  compromise  act 
of  1833  they  declined  to  eleven  millions  in  1837,  and  under  the  protective  tariff 
of  1842  they  rose  again  to  twenty-six  millions  in  1846.  tinder  the  act  of  that 
year  they  fluctuated,  going  down  eleven  millions  in  a  year,  at  two  periods, 
and  up  again  eleven  millions  in  a  single  year,  and  stood  at  sixty-three 
millions  in  1857,  showing  through  the  whole  course  of  the  act  of  1846  the 
unsteadiness  of  its  protective  provisions  and  the  mischiefs  of  its  ad  valorem 
rates — it  was  then,  at  one  of  those  inflation  stages  which  belong  to  the  character 
of  revenue  tariffs,  and  which  invariably  indicate  their  explosion.  The  act  of 
1857  came  just  in  time  to  precipitate  the  result,  and  accordingly  the  receipts  from 
customs  fell  in  one  year  twenty-two  millions,  which  was  a  million  less  -than  they 
had  been  seven  yezfrs  before.  Next  comes  the  crowning  demonstration  under  the 
several  protective  tariffs  or  amendments  of  that  of  1861.  The  revenue  from 
customs  has  risen  in  nine  years  from  forty-nine  to  one  hundred  and  ninety-four  mil 
lions.  Which  of  these  were  the  true  revenue  tariffs  ?  Not  one  of  them  except 
the  strictly  protective  tariffs,  and  they  exactly  in  the  degree  that  they  were  pro 
tective.  Every  so-called  revenue  tariff  was  a  failure  of  its  avowed  purpose,  and 
a  catastrophe  to  the  Treasury  and  the  business  of  the  country  besides.  I  appeal 
to  the  record — there  the  facts  stand  in  overwhelming  force. 


THEORY   AND    POLICY    OF    PROTECTION.  215 

McCulloch,  aud  followed  in  England  and  America  by  all  the  lazy 
thinkers  of  his  school,  put  their  point  thus  :  "  Thope  who  will  not 
buy  need  not  expect  to  sell;  and  conversely;  it  is  impossible  to 
export  without  making  a  corresponding  importation."  Now  how 
does  this  plausible  platitude  sustain  itself  in  its  application  to  our 
system  of  protection  of  manufactures — the  very  thing  against 
which  it  is  leveled  ? 

England  does  not  buy  foreign  manufactures,  yet  she  expects  to 
sell  and  does  sell  her  commodities.  Her  superiority  in  production 
amounts  to  an  almost  total  exclusion  of  manufactures  from  her 
ports ;  they  amount  to  only  a  fraction  less  than  six  per  cent  of  the 
total  value  of  her  imports,  yet  those  totals  amounted  in  1854  to 
seven  hundred  and  forty  millions  of  dollars,  and  in  1864  to  thir 
teen  hundred  and  thirty-three  millions. 

Again,  take  France,  with  her  protective  rates  and  restrictions 
almost  prohibitive  of  competition  in  her  own  markets.  During  the 
ten  years,  1827  to  1836,  her  aggregate  imports  and  exports  amounted 
to  thirteen  thousand  three  hundred  and  sixty-one  millions  of  francs. 
After  an  interval  of  twenty  years,  in  the  ten  years  from  1847  to 
1856,  with  her  prohibitive  system  in  full  operation  all  the  while, 
they  had  risen  to  the  value  of  thirty-one  thousand  three  hundred 
and  sixty-one  millions. 

These  immensely  varied  results  utterly  demolish  the  wretchedly 
unmeaning  aphorism  that  is  employed  to  array  the  protective 
system  against  the  interests  of  foreign  trade,  even  when  measured 
by  its  money  value.  It  would  be  too  stupid  to  propose  it  against 
the  economic  value  of  the  trade  which  it  guards,  selects,  and 
secures ;  and  we  may  dismiss  it  without  further  remark  on  this 
head,  having  already  in  our  chapters  on  "  Commerce "  amply 
exposed  its  mischief  to  the  labor  and  enterprise  which  it  touches 
only  to  destroy. 

If  there  is  any  one  of  the  intentions  of  the  protective  system 
worthier  than  another  of  the  heartiest  approbation,  it  is  its  design 
and  its  power  to  diversify  the  industries  of  the  people  who  adopt  it. 
As  the  elucidation  of  this  topic  involves  some  of  the  vicious  gen 
eralizations  of  the  let-alone-theory  of  foreign  trade,  they  may  be 
appropriately  noticed  here. 

The  jumble  of  truisms  and  generalities  of  this  school  of  econo 
mists  owe  their  origin  to  a  curious  class  of  college  professors, 


216  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

professional  litterateurs,  metaphysicians,  and  professional  world- 
menders.  Such  is  their  description  in  England,  Germany,  and 
France,  and  among  them  may  be  found,  here  and  there,  a  few 
theologians  who  have  taken  leading  positions  among  the  authorities, 
covering  with  their  "  pale  cast  of  thought  the  native  hue  of  prac 
tical  affairs,  and  turning  awry  their  currents  till  they  lose  the 
name  of  action;"  while  here  and  everywhere  their  antagonists 
are,  in  the  main,  men  of  practical  acquaintance  with,  and  interest 
in;  the  affairs  of  individual  and  national  concern. 

Taking  for  example  the  case  of  a  country  like  our  own; 
comparatively  young,  exceedingly  fertile,  capable  of  every  variety 
of  agricultural  production — from  the  cereals  that  affect  the  cooler 
climates  of  the  North,  to  the  sugar  and  cotton  that  demand 
a  semi-tropical  temperature — with  its  improved  lands  very  cheap, 
and  millions  of  unappropriated  acres  that  may  be  had  for  little 
more  than  the  cost  of  preparing  them  for  the  plough,  and  in  all 
respects  eminently  fitted  for  furnishing  provisions  and  raw  mate 
rials.  The  inference  drawn  by  these  theorists  is  that,  nature,  by 
these  circumstances,  makes  farming,  planting,  and  lumbering  our 
distinctive  occupations,  and  invites  our  energies  into  these  special 
fields  of  industry.  Now,  there  is  nothing  in  a  statement  so  general 
as  this  that  anybody  need  dispute.  But  there  are  some  other 
things  just  as  true,  which  must  be  considered  before  we  draw  from 
it  a  practical  policy  of  national  conduct. 

In  the  first  place  :  if  labor  is  really  the  source  of  wealth,  and  the 
various  forms  or  kinds  of  labor  are  not  equally  remunerative  to  the 
individual,  or  beneficial  to  the  community,  it  behooves  us,  as  soon 
as  we  are  in  a  condition  to  choose  among  them,  to  ascertain  whether 
exclusive  agricultural  labor  is  the  most  advantageous  that  we  can 
adopt.  AYe  know,  very  certainly,  that  the  wages  of  labor  are  not  in 
all  things  equal ;  that  its  products  are  of  unequal  value  in  the 
market;  and,  that  all  varieties  of  work  are  not  equally  educating, 
because  they  do  not  all  alike  employ  and  develop  the  same  moral, 
intellectual,  and  physical  faculties ;  and  we  know  that  wages  and 
profits  of  employment  grow  with  the  education  and  training  re 
quired  for  the  men  thus  variously  engaged.  The  difference  between 
skilled  and  unskilled  labor  is  apparent  enough,  and  the  difference 
between  their  respective  products  and  other  results  ought  not  to  be 
forgotten  when  a  people  are  in  condition  to  make  an  election  among 


THEORY    AND    POLICY    OF    PROTECTION.  217 

them.  Nature  has  no  more  determined  that  any  particular  country, 
capable  of  anything  else,  shall  confine  itself  to  agriculture,  than 
that  Washington  should  spend  his  life  as  a  land  surveyor,  because 
there  was  a  wilderness  full  of  that  work  for  him  in  Virginia,  and  he 
was  an  expert  in  the  business.  The  matter  for  that  young  man  to 
decide,  in  choosing  his  occupation,  was  how  he  could  best  promote 
his  own  growth  in  worth  and  power,  and  best  serve  the  general 
welfare ;  and  this  is  the  very  question  for  a  community  to  solve  in 
deciding  upon  its  industrial  policy.  Nature  has  nothing  to  do  with 
it,  except  in  providing  the  means.  Man  is  her  master,  on  con 
dition  that  he  will  be  his  own.  Industry  is  no  longer  drudgery, 
mere  muscle-work ;  it  is  the  art  of  making  nature  work  in  man's 
service  obediently.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  indifference  to  an  individual 
or  a  community  what  sort  of  labor  he  or  they  shall  adopt,  when  a 
choice  presents  itself.  Unmixed  agriculture  cannot  develop  the 
skill  and  enterprise  of  a  people,  for  the  reason  that  it  cannot 
accomplish  that  division  of  labor  which  brings  into  use  every 
variety  of  ability,  and  associates  a  community  by  distributing  its 
functions  helpfully  in  accumulating  wealth.  The  perfection  of  any 
organism,  its  rank  and  its  worth,  and  the  possibilities  of  its  progress 
and  growth,  depend  upon  the  number  of  its  elementary  differences, 
and,  on  their  duly  balanced  activities.  It  is  in  the  multitude  of  his 
parts  and  powers,  and  in  the  due  exercise  of  all  of  them,  that  man 
takes  rank  of  fish ;  and  a  community,  which  is,  in  respect  to 
interests  and  development,  an  aggregate  man,  a  larger  humanity,  is 
put  under  the  same  law  as  to  the  component  individualities,  and 
depends  upon  the  same  conditions,  for  its  worth  and  welfare. 

Without  a  very  large  diversification  of  productive  businesses, 
one-half  of  its  population — its  women — must  be  put  into  the  sup 
ported  class  or  driven  to  unsuited  drudgery.  The  modern  system 
of  manufacture  has  taken  from  the  household  the  spinning-wheel 
and  the  hand-loom.  Four-fifths  of  the  productive  force  employed 
upon  textile  fabrics  is  now  the  province  of  capital,  in  machinery, 
factories,  and  raw  material.  The  domestic  industry  which  a  century 
ago  was  in  the  hands  of  women,  is  now  taken  from  them ;  and  if 
they  are  not  admitted  to  a  participation  in  the  employment  and 
profit  of  such  products,  they  are  turned  idle,  or  remitted  to  useless 
work  that  pays  nothing  to  them.  In  the  degree  that  they  are,  or 
may  hereafter  be,  admitted  into  the  government  of  the  social  and 
15 


218  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

civil  state,  they  will  go  into  the  dangerous  class,  for  the  very  reason 
that  they  will  be  pecuniarily  dependent  upon  the  community. 

In  1850  women  were  twenty-three  and  a  half  in  the  hundred 
hands  employed  in  the  mining,  mechanic,  and  manufacturing  arts 
in  the  United  States.  Under  the  less  favoring  tariff  of  1860  they 
had  declined  to  twenty  and  a  half  per  cent  of  the  total  employees; 
but  still  their  contributions  to,  and  interest  in,  the  manufactures  of 
the  country  at  that  time,  show  the  importance  to  the  sex  of  reserv 
ing  to  the  home  industry  of  the  people  the  supply  of  such  com 
modities  as  are  fitted  to  their  capabilities,  which  is,  in  some  degree, 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  in  1860  the  women  employed  in  such 
works  were  in  number  fully  fifty-four  per  cent  of  all  the  hands 
engaged  in  them.  Eighty- five  millions  of  dollars  were  the  wages 
paid  to  the  aggregate  of  the  employees,  and  the  product  was 
valued  at  four  hundred  and  six  millions.  The  whole  number  of 
women  so  employed  were  212,383 ;  together  their  wages  in  the  year 
amounted  to  833,500,000. 

Are  not  women  greatly  concerned,  and  is  not  the  whole  people  as 
much  interested  in  saving  for  the  sex  such  a  mass  and  such  a  value 
of  suitable  labor  ?  Nay,  would  not  a  complete  system  of  protec 
tion  throw  out  many  thousand  mules  who  now  preoccupy  the  places 
fitted  for  women,  and  give  them  that  much  more  of  independence 
and  of  the  advantages  of  every  kind  attendant  upon  self-support 
ing  employments  ? 

The  signs  of  the  times  fairly  promise  the  concession  of  all  that  is 
substantial,  and  all  that  is  due  to  women,  from  the  sex  now  governing 
them  and  controlling  their  welfare.  This  growing  enfranchisement 
and  responsibility  of  the  subjects  imperatively  demand  that  all  the 
necessary  accompaniments  should  be  provided. 

Men  have  worked  themselves  into  civilization  and  the  sovereignty 
of  the  elements,  so  far  as  they  have  gone,  by  skilled  labor  in 
diversified  branches  of  industry.  The  same  thing,  and  all  ap 
proaches  to  it,  however  attained,  can  be  maintained  only  by  the 
same  means  and  processes.  Women,  no  more  than  men,  can  get 
possession  and  enjoyment  of  their  abstract  rights  but  by  conforming 
to  the  law  of  progress,  and  the  mere  investiture  of  any  kind,  or 
any  number  of  franchises,  cannot  secure  their  benefits  to  any  class, 
sex,  or  race  of  mankind,  but  by  compliance  with  the  conditions  on 
which  such  rights  and  liberties  depend. 


THEORY   AND    POLICY    OF   PROTECTION.  219 

Before  leaving  the  special  dependence  of  our  women  upon  the 
policy  which  alone  can  secure  them  the  independence  and  the  de 
velopment  which  self-supporting  industry  affords,  it  is  proper  to 
turn  their  attention  to  the  kinds  of  remunerative  labor  for  which 
they  have  proved  their  fitness.  The  aggregate  of  wages  and  the 
numbers  of  the  sex  engaged,  above  stated,  were  employed  in  the 
manufacture  of  the  following  among  the  occupations  reported  by 
the  census  of  1860 :  Paper  boxes  were  made  by  1,090 ;  carpets, 
2,771;  clothing,  77,871;  cotton  goods  employed,  76,110  ;  hats  and 
caps,  4,243;  hosiery,  6;323 ;  millinery  and  dress  making,  5, .537 ; 
paper,  4,392 ;  straw  goods,  6,803  ;  umbrellas  and  parasols,  1,410; 
woolen  goods,  17,796;  boots  and  shoes,  28,574;  cigars,  snuff,  and 
tobacco,  3,721.  Now  these  goods,  and  an  endless  variety,  and  a 
very  great  value,  of  other  articles  not  enumerated,  are  the  very 
commodities  for  the  production  of  which  foreign  manufactures 
are  in  active  competition  with  us.  Let  down  the  bars,  and  our 
women  will  be  driven  out  of  this  immense  field  of  employment, 
and  excluded  besides  from  at  least  an  equally  extensive  additional 
territory  of  production  for  which  they  are  well  prepared,  and  ought 
to  enjoy.  Those  among  them  who  are  agitating  for  the  right  of 
suffrage  ought  to  be  careful  at  the  same  time  to  qualify  their  con 
stituents  for  a  wise  administration  of  the  political  power  which 
they  expect  to  wield.  The  ballot  and  idleness  go  badly  together; 
they  demoralize  each  other  badly.  Better  for  the  disfranchised 
and  for  the  public  weal,  if  both  sexes  of  idlers  were  debarred  from 
the  exercise  of  the  law-making  power,  than  confer  it  upon  either, 
if  the  franchise  only  tends  to  throw  the  holders  into  the  dema 
gogue  market.  The  masculine  voter  can  make  nothing  out  of  his 
ballot  but  the  corruption  of  office  seeking  and  the  opportunity  of 
selling  his  soul  at  the  polls,  unless  he  be  really  independent  of 
politics  as  a  trade. 

The  freedmen  are  in  a  somewhat  different  predicament.  The  ballot 
is  to  them  protection  from  the  persecution  of  the  ruffianism  of  the 
country,  and  the  means  of  security  from  the  general  prejudice  of 
color.  In  this  respect  it  is  to  them  the  greatest  of  social  benefits. 
"Women  do  not  need  it  for  these  purposes ;  they  are  not  exposed  to 
the  evils  of  an  inferior  caste  in  society.  But  the  lately  enfranchised 
negro,  is  in  exactly  the  same  position  as  our  women  in  respect  to 
the  labor  question.  If  the  opportunity  for  entering  the  field  of  the 


220  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

skilled  industries  is  destroyed  through  the  preoccupation  of  our 
markets  for  their  products,  by  the  cheap  labor  of  foreigners,  they 
will  be  driven  back  to  the  very  kinds  of  labor  which  occupied  them 
in  slavery,  and  they  must  accept  the  low  wages  which  the  world 
allows  to  such  drudgeries. 

Without  property,  without  education  in  the  arts,  they  are  as  yet 
confined  to  the  old-time  kind  of  plantation  work.  Their  labor  has 
already  restored  the  cotton  product  to  the  stage  it  had  attained 
before  the  Ptebellion,  and  the  price  of  the  staple  in  its  gorged 
markets  is  already  nearly  down  to  the  figure  it  reached  when  it 
was  at  the  lowest.  American  cotton  sold  at  seven  and  three-quar 
ters  pence  at  Liverpool  in  1860.  It  is  now  quoted  at  seven  and  a 
half  pence  there,  and  is  steadily  declining  toward  the  price  it  held 
in  its  worst  days,  when  no  wages  were  paid  to  the  cultivators,  and 
the  masters  made  no  profit  in  its  cultivation.  How  long  will  this 
system  continue  before  the  former  slaves  will  be  upon  as  short  an 
allowance  as  ever  they  were.  A  diversified  industry  is  the  only 
thing  that  can  save  them  from  that  bondage  of  poverty  which  differs 
only  in  name  from  chattel  slavery.  Our  white  women  and  our 
slave  men,  until  lately,  were  always  classified  together,  in  respect 
to  their  political  status.  They  are  how,  and  must  for  long,  be  in 
the  same  economical  category.  The  law  of  the  industrial  life  of  the 
one,  is  the  law\)f  the  other ;  and  nothing  is  more  astonishing  to  one 
who  sees  their  equal  position  in  relation  to  real  personal  liberty  and 
independence,  than  to  find  philanthropists  arguing  and  voting  for  a 
system  of  international  trade  that  must  hold  them  both  alike  in 
dependence,  and  whatever  of  disability  and  degradation,  they  are 
respectively  exposed  to. 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

THE    MOST    PROMINENT    AND    PLAUSIBLE    OBJECTIONS    TO 
PROTECTION. 

Protection  of  national  labor  .unfairly  classed  among  the  obsolete  restrictions  of 
industry  and  trade. — Protection,  the  reciprocal  of  allegiance,  embraces  the 
interests  of  labor,  and  commands  its  defense. — Countervailing  legislation  in 
defense  of  foreign  trade  unquestionably  right,  but  still  more  imperatively 
demanded  against  injuries  of  domestic  commerce. — The  natural  differences  of 
national  conditions,  enough  for  all  beneficial  foreign  commerce ;  the  accidental 
differences  are  not  to  be  perpetuated. — Production  precedes  exchange,  and 
productive  power  takes  precedence  of  trade  in  national  policy. — Protection,  so 
far  from  interfering  with  the  individual's  choice  of  occupation  or  market,  aims 
solely  at  securing  their  liberty  by  providing  their  opportunity. — Liberty  without 
its  defenses  is  a  mockery. — Free  trade,  a  modified  form  of  rebellion — the  spirit 
of  insurrection  against  the  law  of  order. — Not  that  government  which  governs 
least,  but  that  which  best  promotes  the  public  welfare,  is  best. — Who  pays  the 
duty? — "When  non-protective  duties* are  imposed  the  consumer  must  pay  them. 
Domestic  competition  in  the  home  market  throws  a  part  or  the  whole  of  the 
duty  upon  the  foreign  producer. — How  prices  are  affected  by  domestic  compe 
tition. — If  a  protective  duty,  in  any  case,  raises  the  prices  above  a  given  rate, 
it  also  holds  it  from  ever  rising  higher — it  permanently  defends  consumers 
against  monopoly  prices. — If  it  affords  profits  unduly  large,  domestic  com 
petition  immediately  reduces  them  to  the  ordinary  standard,  and  secures  a  con 
stant  reduction  of  prices  in  keeping  with  all  improvements  in  production. — No 
rise  of  prices  can  go  above  the  point  which  equalizes  the  protected  industry  with 
all  others  in  the  community. — To  forbid  this,  is  simply  to  forbid  native  enter 
prise  to  enter  upon  any  industry  which  foreigners  have  preoccupied,  until 
wages  are  reduced  to  the  lowest  known  in  the  world ;  till  capital  is  as  cheap, 
because  as  abundant,  and  skill,  with  its  education  denied,  is  as  great — conclu 
sions  alike  preposterous  and  atrocious. — Nine-tenths  of  the  consumers  are  also 
producers,  and  have  the  largest  interests  in  all  the  results  of  protection. — The 
benefits  of  the  policy  distributed  among  all  classes,  and  all  are  immediately  re 
paid  and  refunded  any  temporary  increase  of  prices. — Fallacy  of  the  assumed 
fixity  of  price  upon  which  the  increased  cost  of  a  protective  duty  is  calculated. — 
Cost  of  iron  as  affected  by  various  rates  of  duty — of  lead — of  steel  rails. — 
Prices  of  foreign  commodities  always  fall  under  protective  duties. — The  testi 
mony  of  consumers  of  an  important  foreign  product. — Effect  of  duties  upon 
foreign  imports  reflected  upon  competing  domestic  products  :  statement  of  the 
free  trade  argument  by  their  accepted  exponent  of  the  doctrine. — His  cypher- 
ings  and  their  impossible  results. — The  equally  monstrous  consequences  of  the 

221 


222  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

"Revenue"  duties  which  the  party  proposes  and  advocates. — Their  revenue 
duties  shown  to  cost  consumers,  on  their  own  principles,  an  average  of  ten  times 
the  amount  of  revenue  which  they  yield. — The  "  Revenue  Reformers"  inextri 
cably  entangled  by  the  reductio  ad  ubaurdum  of  their  system. — Following  their 
doctrine,  the  customs  from  which  they  are  required  to  raise  one  hundred  and 
fifty,  cannot  be  made  to  yield  more  than  twenty-five,  millions. — The  conse 
quences  to  the  tax  payers. — Absurd  workings  of  the  assumed  principle — the 
larger  the  domestic  production  the  greater  the  burden  of  the  revenue  duty,  and 
the  only  escape  is  the  abandonment  of  any  industry  that  any  other  people 
adopt. — Our  taxes  now  fifteen  per  cent  of  our  annual  products.  Must  we  bear 
this  ourselves  and  give  an  untaxed  market  to  our  foreign  rivals  ? — Effects  of 
protective  duties  summarized. 

THE  discussion  of  the  subject  now  in  hand  is  embarrassed  by  the 
thousand  and  one  special  relations  which  protection  holds  to  the 
social  and  industrial  interests  of  the  people,  and  resultingly  to  the 
financial  health  of  the  Government.  I  have  endeavored  to  pre 
sent  the  principle  in  its  nature,  its  adaptations,  and  intentions,  as  it 
interlocks  and  conflicts  with  the  antagonist  theory  of  trade,  for  I 
could  not  advantageously,  within  the  limits  of  this  treatise,  give  it  a 
more  formal  and  systematic  array.  Following  the  same  plan  of  treat 
ment  I  propose  to  consider  in  this  chapter  the  most  prominent  and 
plausible  objections  urged  by  free  traders ;  aud;  in  their  appropriate 
places,  to  discuss  the  doctrines  of  free  trade,  or  the  foundation  upon 
which  it  is  made  to  rest. 

The  free  trade  logicians  overload  their  argument  with  an  insuf 
ferable  tediousness  of  instances  in  which  the  governments  of  times 
past  interfered  with  the  business  affairs  of  their  people.  They 
enjoy  -themselves  beyond  limits  on  "  the  limitation  of  the  powers  of 
government."  They  put  themselves  among  the  foreground  advo 
cates  of  civil  and  political  progress,  in  clamoring  for  the  greatest 
possible  extension  of  the  let-alone  principle  of  governmental  policy; 
all  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  over  to  the  doctrine  of  protection 
the  odium  of  the  old-time  usury  laws ;  the  arbitrary  regulation  of 
wages  and  prices ;  the  grants  of  monopolies ;  the  laws  in  restraint 
of  working-men's  combinations  j  the  restraints  despotically  imposed 
upon  the  freedom  of  opinion  and  publication,  with  all  the  other 
abuses  of  authority  which  can  be  pressed  into  service.  These 
oppressive  and  repressive  exercises  of  the  civil  power  are  justly 
under  condemnation  now,  and  it  is  much  to  the  purpose  of  the 
party  of  professed  progressives  to  put  protection  of  home  industry 
into  the  class  of  obsolete  usages,  which  are  discredited  by  the 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PROTECTION.  223 

spirit  of  modern  progress.     It  can  then  be  overwhelmed  with  an 
epithet,  and  all  argument  of  its  special  merits  is  escaped. 

That  protection,  however,  which  is  the  reciprocal  of  allegiance  in 
the  philosophy  of  law,  must,  nevertheless,  be  allowed  as  a  duty  of 
government,  however  much  the  power  may  have  been  abused.  The 
range  of  the  duty  and  the  mode  of  exercising  the  just  power  conferred, 
must  be  coextensive  with  the  nation's  necessities,  especially  when 
it  is  limited,  as  in  the  case  of  regulating  international  trade,  to 
such  measures  of  defense  as  are  required  against  foreign  inter 
ference,  whatever  form  it  may  take,  with  the  freedom  of  the  people 
in  their  choice  of  the  ways  and  means  of  self-support,  and  of  em 
ploying  their  own  labor  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth.  Government  is 
bound  to  adopt  countervailing  and  defensive  measures  against  the 
mischiefs  and  injuries  threatened  or  inflicted  by  foreign  govern 
ments  or  people,  by  their  commercial  or  maritime  action  upon 
domestic  rights  and  interests ;  and,  it  may  do  this  by  whatever 
means  the  case  requires  and  warrants.  This  will  not  be  disputed, 
or  at  least,  needs  no  further  vindication  than  its  mere  statement. 

Laissez-faire  can  scarcely  require  the  sovereign  power  to  let 
its  own  people  alone,  and  permit  all  other  people  to  do  what 
they  please  against  the  national  interests.  Should  a  foreign 
government  exclude  our  ships,  or  our  products  from  its  ports,  or 
injuriously  burden  our  commerce,  is  our  own  legislature  to  be 
refused  the  power,  or  denied  the  capacity,  to  protect  the  national 
interests  so  oppressed  ?  Yet  such  measures  would  only  affect  that 
exceedingly  small  portion  of  our  productive  industry  which  is 
involved  in  our  foreign  trade;  and  surely  it  cannot  be  admitted  that 
there  is  no  corresponding  protective  and  defensive  power  which 
may  be  rightfully  addressed  to  the  support  and  safety  of  that  ten 
fold  larger  commerce  which  we  have  at  home,  and  the  thousandfold 
larger  interest  which  belongs  to  the  freedom  of  domestic  labor. 

A  foreign  people,  with  larger  and  cheaper  capital;  longer  ex 
perience  and  its  greater  skill ;  cheaper  and  more  abundant  labor, 
and  many  another  decided  advantage  in  a  competitive  struggle, 
find  their  interest  in  making  us  their  customers  for  their  own 
benefit  at  the  expense  of  our  own  labor  system ;  and  yet  we  are 
forbidden  by  the  spirit  of  progress  to  employ  the  self-preservation 
power  of  nationality  in  abatement  or  avoidance  of  the  mischief! 
Free  trade  in  its  basis  principle  allows  the  individuality  of  the 


224  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

nations,  and  all  their  economic  differences  of  conditions,  but  this 
only  as  a  ground  for  their  cosmopolitanism  of  trade.  The  more 
unlike  the  communities  of  men  are,  the  better  they  are  fitted  for 
trade  exchanges,  and  the  more  permanent  these  differences  can  be 
made,  and  the  more  the  resulting  dependency  of  each  upon  the 
others  can  be  increased,  the  better  for  trade  !  Our  answer  to  this  is, 
that  the  natural  differences  are  enough  for  the  commercial  relations 
of  the  various  societies  of  men;  but  the  accidental  abnormal,  and 
injurious  conditions  by  which  they  are  differenced  are  not  to  be 
accepted,  but  to  be  amended,  for  the  sake  of  due  progress  of  all 
the  parties.  In  natural  sequence  production  precedes  exchange, 
and  the  answering  principle  in  logic  requires  that  productive  power 
should  have  precedence  of  trade  interests  in  the  direction  of  national 
policy. 

From  such  freedom  of  international  exchange  as  utterly  ignores 
all  national  distinctions,  necessities,  and  means  of  economic  pro 
gress,  these  people  carry  over  a  cluster  of  abstractions  to  their 
theory  of  individual  freedom.  They  insist  upon  '•'  the  riglit  of  the 
laborer  to  choose  his  own  occupation;"  that  "every  man  has  the 
right  to  dispose  of  his  own  labor,  wherever  and  whenever  he  thinks 
it  most  advantageous  to  himself,"  and  that  "  ever}7  one  is  better 
able  to  choose  his  own  industrial  pursuit  than  the  government  can 
be."  Such  mere  truisms  as  these  no  protectionist  disputes,  nor  is 
he  otherwise  bound  to  notice,  than  to  expose  their  impertinence  in 
the  argument.  All  such  platitudes  are  answered  in  a  word : 
Protection  does  not  interfere  in  the  choice  of  men's  occupations ; 
with  their  choice  of  markets;  nor,  with  any  other  thing,  right,  or 
business  engagement  that  anybody  ever  claimed.  So  far  from  this, 
its  whole  end  and  aim,  and  its  only  possible  operation,  are  to  secure 
the  opportunity  for  such  freedom  of  choice — for  such  freedom  in 
industrial  production,  and  such  freedom  of  exchange,  as  the  people 
who  adopt  it  require  for  the  defense  and  advancement  of  their 
individual  and  national  prosperity. 

Abstract  freedom  conceded,  with  its  necessary  defenses  withheld, 
is  a  mockery.  Letting  everybody  loose  to  prey  upon  everybody 
else,  if  they  can  or  will,  is  not  liberty,  but  lawlessness.  To  expose  the 
weak  to  the  strong ;  to  make  the  markets  of  the  country  a  melee  of 
the  nations;  is  just  such  a  privilege  as  the  rough-shod  donkey 
offered  to  the  chickens  in  the  barn-yard  when  he  proposed  a  free 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PROTECTION.  225 

dance,  with  its  unrestricted  liberties  to  the  partners,  upon  the 
Laissez-faire  principle  of  sauve  qui pent. 

Free  traders  make  an  utterly  unfair  use  of  the  maxim,  "  that 
government  is  best  which  governs  least."  They  push  it  to  the 
length  of  saying  that,  in  trade,  no  government  is  best  of  all.  They 
avail  themselves  of  the  indignation  which  the  obsolete  restrictions 
upon  industrial  and  commercial  liberty  of  the  by-gone  despotisms 
provoked.  They  are  full  of  that  revolutionary  spirit  which,  to 
resist  abuses,  runs  into  the  diametrically  opposite  error,  as  the  most 
effective  rallying  cry  of  resistance.  Wise  moderation  has  not  that 
full  commitment,  that  squareness  of  issue  joined,  that  plump  oppo- 
siteness,  which  most  strongly  enlists  and  incites  parties  in  warfare. 
This  is  the  spirit  of  insurrection  with  its  battle-cry  of  "  Liberty 
against  the  Government."  But  people  must  govern  themselves 
even  in  freedom,  and  they  must  defend  themselves  until  millennium 
comes,  and  there  is  some  point  at  which  lawlessness  must  be  checked 
and  authority  be  introduced;  and  it  is  best  to  get  rid  of  the  over 
strained  maxims  of  rebellion  when  authorized  and  organized  gov 
ernment  is  required.  Disorderly  principles  serve  very  well  for 
pulling  down  Babylon;  but  when  Jerusalem  is  to  be  built  and 
established,  order,  degree,  and  direction  are  demanded,  and  it  is 
then  time  to  adopt  and  respect  the  doctrine  that  the  principles  and 
policy  of  that  government  are  best  which  best  promote  the  welfare 
of  the  people — which  best  execute  themselves  by  their  reasonable 
ness,  practicability,  and  utility,  and  are  least  liable  to  abuse;  or, 
the  most  expedient  is  best. 

The  great  point  which  free  traders  make  and  most  persistently 
press  against  protective  duties  is,  that,  as  they  are  imposed  for  the 
purpose  of  equalizing  the  prices  of  domestic  with  foreign  products 
in  the  home  market,  they  must  necessarily  increase  the  cost  of  such 
commodities  to  the  consumer.  This  is  not  clear,  nor  is  it  in  general 
true  of  the  foreign  article  so  charged ;  for  a  part,  or  the  whole,  of  the 
duty  may  be  thrown  upon  the  foreigner,  either  in  abatement  of  his 
profits,  or  in  reduction  of  the  wages  and  price  of  the  raw  material, 
or,  of  all  together.  This  depends  entirely  upon  the  competition 
offered  in  the  domestic  market.  If  the  foreigner  has  a  monopoly  of 
the  product,  he  can  charge  the  whole  of  the  duty  upon  it  to  the 
consumer.  There  is  nothing  to  hinder  him.  This  is  obviously  true 
in  the  matter  of  tropical  commodities  sold  in  the  United  States. 


226  QUESTIONS    OF    THE   DAY. 

Five  cents  import  duty  upon  coffee,  and  twenty-five  cents  upon  tea, 
are  nothing  else  than  a  domestic  tax  collected  at  the  custom  house. 
Such  tax  protects  nothing  native,  and  nothing  native  checks  its 
charge  upon  the  consumer ;  he  must  pay  the  whole  duty,  and  the 
importer  has  possession  of  our  market  as  free  as  if  no  duty  at  all 
were  imposed.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  all  commodities  imported 
which  meet  no  competition,  or  no  effective  rivalry  in  the  market 
other  than  that  offered  by  other  foreign  traders. 

Suppose  the  price  at  which  the  foreign  article  can  be  profitably 
offered,  to  be  fixed,  which  it  is  not  and  cannot  be,  but,  for  the  pur 
pose  of  trying  the  case,  let  this  point  be  assumed.  Domestic  labor 
and  capital  cannot  yield  it  at  that  price,  but  would  be  enabled  to  do 
so  by  charging  it,  if  worth  one  dollar,  with  a  twenty-five  per  cent 
duty,  and  such  a  charge  is  accordingly  levied.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  contest,  it  might  seem  that,  both  the  domestic  and  foreign 
article  would  be  raised  to  that  price.  But,  we  now  have  a  condition 
of  things  in  which  the  foreigner,  to  hold  the  market,  must  reduce 
his  profits,  or  lose  the  trade,  or  much  of  it,  and  the  home-made  can 
well  be  supplied  at  one-dollar  and  twenty-five  cents.  The  results  are 
of  two  kinds,  the  foreign  article  cannot  go  above  a  dollar  and  a 
quarter,  because  it  will  be  driven  out  by  the  native.  This  is  a 
great  point  attained.  It  is  now  no  longer  at  the  option  of  the  for 
eigner  to  raise  the  price  as  occasions  would  otherwise  tempt  him. 
And  if  the  protective  duty  has  increased  the  cost  to  the  consumer, 
it  holds  it  down  to  that  point  thereafter. 

Protective  duties  are  imposed  to  encourage  home  industry.  The 
cost  of  production,  during  the  process  of  improvement  in  the  business, 
will  decline  regularly,  and  may  do  so  very  largely — sufficiently  to 
afford  the  article  at  one  dollar,  or  the  supposed  remunerative  price 
of  the  foreign  commodity  at  the  commencement  of  the  contest  for 
the  home  market.  This  is  not  assuming  a  shade  of  probability  too 
much.  And  then  who  pays  the  duty,  if  the  importer  still  contends 
for  the  market?  Plainly  he  must  pay,  or  lose,  the  whole  of  it;  he 
must  suffer  it  in  abatement  of  profit,  or  in  reduction  of  wages,  and 
as  long  as  he  does  so,  the  consumer  has  the  product  at  the  former 
price,  and  the  duty  goes  into  the  national  treasury,  as  so  much  tax 
paid  by  the  foreigner  for  the  privilege  of  our  market.  These  two 
things  are  then  secured  :  first,  the  market  price  is  held  down  to  the 
figure  at  which  native  production  can  afford  it;  and  second,  it  is 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PROTECTION.  227 

reduced  progressively  to  the  extent  which  native  skill  and  experi 
ence  acquired  can  effect.  The  maximum  cost  is  fixed  for  the 
benefit  of  the  consumer,  and  an  assured  decline  of  that  maximum  is 
certainly  provided  for.  If  the  dollar  and  a  quarter  yields  a  large 
profit,  home  competition  will  immediately  pull  it  down,  arid  never 
cease  reducing  it  until  the  profit  falls  to  the  average  of  all  other 
investments  and  enterprises. 

But,  at  first,  the  duty  does  raise  the  price,  or  means  to  raise  it, 
above  the  point  at  which  the  foreign  article  is  then  sold ;  but  not 
above  that  at  which  it  may  be  held  in  the  absence  of  all  competition. 
Granting  this,  let  us  see  how  high  such  price  may  go  under  pro 
tection.  Manifestly  no  higher  than  will  raise  the  wages  of  labor  and 
the  profits  of  capital  in  that  to  the  level  of  other  businesses  :  which 
means  this,  and  nothing  else  or  more,  that  wages  and  profits  in  such- 
a  business  were  previously  below  the  general  level.  This  is  the 
limit  of  the  rise,  absolutely  and  permanently  fixed.  Now,  what  is 
the  objection  of  the  consumer  to  such  equalization  ?  Will  he  answer 
that  this  particular  industry,  so  to  be  fostered,  requires  protection 
because  it  is  not  so  favorably  conditioned  as  others  which  ask  no 
assistance,  and  ought,  therefore,  to  be  abandoned  ?  Abandoned,  till 
when  ?  Will  he  answer  ?  What  other  reply  can  he  give  than  "  to 
the  time  when  wages  shall  be  as  low  as  in  the  country  of  the  rival, 
which  monopolizes  the  trade  by  underpaying  its  laborers !  or  till 
capital  shall  be  as  cheap  and  skill  and  experience  as  great !"  And 
will  he  tell  us  when  these  things  shall  be,  and  how  they  shall  be 
brought  about  ?  Shall  wages  be  driven  down  with  us,  by  the 
hungry  strife  for  work  that  has  lowered  them  to  the  starving  point 
abroad  ?  Can  skill  be  acquired  while  its  education  is  denied  ?  And 
will  capital  be  accumulated  by  the  process  of  limiting  its  employ 
ment  to  the  least  remunerative  investments  ? 

A  general  answer  to  this  general  objection  is  sufficient.  Educa 
tion  must  be  paid  for,  and  it  always  repays  its  cost  if  it  be  sound, 
practical  and  serviceable. 

Who  are  the  consumers  that  free  trade  pleads  for  so  impor 
tunately  ?  Are  not  quite  nine-tenths  of  them  in  the  United  States 
also  producers  ?  Opening  up  new  avenues  of  occupation  for  them 
and  enlarging  old  ones,  has  the  effect  first  of  diminishing  competi 
tion  for  the  sale  of  labor.  It  also  withdraws  from  some  industries 
a  portion  of  producers  and  makes  them  consumers  for  the  re- 


228  QUESTIONS  or  THE  DAY. 

mainder.  It  gives  and  secures  for  all  a  home  market  that  can  be 
defended  against  all  injurious  invasions  from  abroad.  It  enlarges 
the  diversification  of  labor,  and  adapts  it  to  the  capabilities  of 
thousands  and  even  millions  of  such  persons  as  would  otherwise  be 
unproductive,  and  fall  into  the  supported  or  dangerous  class  of  the 
community ;  and  thus,  by  distributing  the  benefits  of  the  policy 
upon  all  classes  and  conditions  of  society,  it  immediately  repays  all 
the  earlier  enhancement  of  prices,  and  forthwith  commences  to 
lower  them  permanently  and  securely. 

But  we  have  gone  too  far,  in  allowing  prices  to  be  fixed  or  re 
strained  by  anything  else  than  the  force  of  home  competition.  It 
is  a  curious  assumption  of  the  free  traders  that  always  makes  any 
given  price  of  a  foreign  product  the  standard  or  basis  from  which 
they  count  the  increased  cost  to  the  consumer  of  the  duty  imposed 
upon  it. 

It  does  seem  like  a  waste  of  words  to  expose  this  fallacy,  but  an 
instance  or  two  out  of  hundreds  will  at  least  give  the  facts  to  be  ex 
plained  for  the  help  of  those  who  do  not  or  will  not  see  the  princi 
ple  that  rules  the  subject : 

In  the  year  1844  the  duty  on  English  common  bar  iron  was  8-5 
per  ton.  The  price  in  the  New  York  market  (average  of  the  year) 
was  $61.83.  The  cost  less  the  duty,  it  is  assumed,  would  have 
been  $36.83,  and  the  ad  valorem  duty  was,  therefore,  sixty-eight 
per  cent.  The  price,  with  the  duty  off,  we  will  call  the  prime 
cost  for  the  purpose  of  our  demonstration.  The  rate  of  duty  was 
twice  lowered  between  1844  and  1860  :  in  1846  it  was  reduced  to 
thirty  per  cent,  and  again,  in  1857,  to  twenty-four  per  cent  upon 
the  prime  cost. 

Now  look  at  the  effect  of  these  varied  rates  upon  the  price  : 

1844,  duty $25  00  per  ton Prime  cost $36  S3  per  ton. 

1854  «  16  42   "   "   54  70   " 

1858  "  10  04   "   «   41  85   " 

1860  "  8  22   «   "   34  23   " 

Here  we  see  that  in  the  first  stage  of  diminished  rates,  when  the 
duty  fell  $8.57,  the  cost  rose  $17.87.  At  the  second  stage,  when 
the  duty  had  fallen  $14.96,  the  price  was  still  $5.02  higher  than  in 
1844,  and  when  the  duty  had  been  reduced  $16.78,  the  cost  had 
fallen  but  $2.60. 

Take  another  instance :  in  1845;  under  the  protective  tariff  of 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PROTECTION.  229 

1842,  the  duty  upon  pig  lead  was  S3  per  hundred  pounds;  the 
price  in  the  New  York  market  (average  for  the  year)  was  $3.37£. 
The  duty  being  eight  hundred  per  cent  upon  the  prime  cost,  or  as 
the  free  traders  argue,  the  lead  might  have  been  had  for  thirty- 
seven  and  a  half  cents,  duty  off.  From  1847  to  1857,  under  an 
ad  valorem  duty  of  twenty  per  cent,  the  price  rose  at  a  pretty  even 
pace,  beginning  in  1847  at  $4.31,  and  ending  in  1857,  at  $7.03 — 
the  duty  reduced  to  one-fortieth  and  the  price  considerably  more 
than  doubled !  Who  paid  the  duty  in  1844,  when  the  domestic 
production  was  protected ;  and  who  paid  the  twenty  per  cent  duty 
in  1857,  when  the  domestic  rivalry  was  driven  out  of  the  market? 

One  more  instance,  because  a  much  more  recent  one,  must  be 
added : 

In  1864  the  importation  of  steel  rails  began  in  the  United 
States.  They  were  sold  that  year  to  our  railroad  companies  at  $162 
to  $135  per  ton,  in  gold.  In  1867  American  manufacturers  began 
to  supply  the  market,  the  foreign  rails  went  down  to  $115  to  $110 
per  ton.  In  April  1870  they  were  lowered  to  $72,  in  New  York 
and  Philadelphia ;  now  in  1864  the  duty  being  levied  in  ad  valor- 
ems,  was  equivalent  to  $46.60,  in  gold,  and  was  paid  by  the  Ameri 
can  consumer,  which  would  leave  to  the  rail  makers  one  hundred 
and  one  dollars  and  ninety  cents  as  the  prime  cost  of  the  rails;  in 
April  1870,  the  duty,  being  an  ad  valorem,  fell  to  $18,  and  left  the 
producers  in  England  but  $54  per  ton,  gold. 

Here  American  competition  reduced  the  price  in  our  Atlantic 
cities  to  $4.80  less  than  one-half  it  had  been  at,  six  years  before. 
Such,  in  these  instances,  has  been  the  effects  of  protective  duties 
upon  prices  of  foreign  products  in  the  domestic  market.  The  rail 
road  companies  in  great  numbers,  including  the  most  important  of 
them,  petitioned  Congress  in  1870  to  raise  the  duty  upon  these  rails, 
and,  to  make  them  certainly  protective,  asked  that  they  be  changed 
to  specifics,  and  fixed  at  $44.80  per  gross  ton,  for  which  they  gave 
the  reason  that  they  "  as  users  of  steel  rails  and  transporters  of  the 
food  and  material  for  American  manufacturers  and  their  numerous 
employees  and  skilled  laborers,  do  not  desire  to  be  dependent  ex 
clusively  upon  the  foreign  supply/'  They  would  rather  have  the 
rails  they  require  at  eighty  or  even  a  hundred  dollars  per  ton,  than 
pay,  as  they  did  in  1864,  an  average  of  one  hundred  and  "forty- 
eight  for  them.  They  wish  to  have  the  rates  held  down  to  such  a 


230  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

figure  as  Americans  can  make  them  for,  and  therefore,  would  have 
the  domestic  make  sustained  by  a  sufficiently  protective  duty.  Do 
they  undertsand  their  business  ?  And  are  not  all  consumers  thus 
protected  by  the  policy  that  home  production  secures  to  them  from 
the  unlimited  demands  of  the  foreign  monopolists? 

There  is  nothing  which  the  free  traders  make  so  much  of,  or 
press  so  urgently  upon  the  inexpert  and  uninformed  of  their  audi 
ences,  as  the  reflected  effect  of  protective  duties  upon  the  prices  of 
the  domestic  products.  Their  whole  doctrine  turns  upon  prices,  and 
they  are  bound  to  make  the  most  of  them.  This  party  in  the 
United  States  accepts  the  late  special  Commissioner  of  the  Revenue 
as  the  expositor  of  this  point  in  their  appeal  to  the  populace,  and 
rely  upon  his  statistical  arguments  as  the  most  effective  of  their 
weapons.  I  quote .  him  only  to  authenticate  my  statement  of  the 
propositions  on  which  they  throw  their  force.  In  his  official  report 
to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  dated  December,  1869,  will  be 
found  in  detail  the  data  and  the  inferences  which  I  must  condense 
in  a  brief  but  sufficiently  forcible  array.  He  says,  in  so  many  words, 
that  a  reduction  in  the  duty  upon  foreign  salt  would  be  followed  by 
a  corresponding  reduction  in  the  price  of  the  domestic  article.  In 
a  dozen  other  instances,  in  other  words,  he  says  the  same  thing. 
He  makes  a  law  of  prices  out  of  this  position,  and  bases  all  his 
calculations  of  the  amount  of  relief  the  people  must  obtain  in  the 
cost  of  home-made  commodities,  by  any  given  percentage  of  reduc 
tion  in  the  duties  imposed  upon  the  competing  commodities  of 
foreign  origin  brought  to  our  markets. 

On  this  ground  and  for  this  purpose  he  proposes  the  remission  of 
$750,000  in  the  duties  collected  from  foreign  pig-iron  in  the  fiscal 
year  1867-8,  and  says  that  such  a  reduction  would  relieve  the 
consumers  of  domestic  pig  iron  of  no  less  than  810,800,000,  thus 
reducing  the  cost  of  the  total  foreign  and  domestic  consumption  by 
fifteen  and  four-tenths  times  the  amount  of  the  duty  if  retained.  A 
reduction  of  $600,000  upon  the  duties  charged  upon  foreign  salt, 
he  says,  "  would  relieve  the  community  of  a  tax,  in  the  first  instance, 
of  $3,900,000  per  annum;"  a  reduction  of  $3,500,000  upon  the 
duties  charged  on  hides,  leather,  all  the  manufactures  of  leather, 
tanning  barks,  Listings  and  serge,  would  have  the  effect  of  "  re 
lieving  the  people  from  a  burden  of  taxation,  as  already  demon 
strated,  approximating  the  sum  of  $1S;000;000;"  and  $1,202,020 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PROTECTION.  231 

of  duties  upon  imported  timber  and  lumber,  in  all  forms,  wholly 
remitted,  would,  by  the  same  principles  of  calculation,  reduce  the 
cost  of  all  such  articles  produced  at  home  for  consumption  no  less 
than  816,000,000.  In  the  aggregate  of  these  four  classes  of  goods 
alone,  the  import  duties  upon  similar  products  are  made,  by  the 
commissioner's  logic  and  computation,  to  enhance  the  cost  of  the 
domestic  product  $48,700,000,  while  their  foreign  correspondents 
yield  only  86,112,000  of  revenue. 

This  doctrine  applies  to  all  other  duty-paying  imports,  and  to 
the  reflected  effect  upon  the  prices  of  the  domestic  commodities 
which  divide  the  home  market  with  them.  Let  us  try  it  through* 
the  entire  range  of  its  supposed  operation  : 

The  official  value  of  all  such  foreign  goods,  so  charged  with  im 
port  duties,  which  met  the  competition  of  American  goods  in  the 
year  1867-8,  was  $178,000,000 ;  the  aggregate  duties  amounted  to 
$85,400,000 — an  average  of  a  small  fraction  less  than  forty-eight 
per  cent.  We  have  no  authoritative  estimate  of  the  value  of  such 
goods  manufactured  in  the  United  States  in  that  year,  but  we  can 
guess.  The  increase  of  the  year  1860  upon  1850  was  eighty-five 
per  cent;  the  product  of  1860  was  $1,885,000,000;  eighty-five  per 
cent  will  be  little  enough  under  all  the  circumstances  to  add  to  the 
value  of  1860  for  that  of  1868.  This  gives  us  3,487  millions  as 
the  value  of  the  products  of  the  year.  On  which  sum,  according  to 
this  theory,  a  forty-eight  per  cent  increase  of  cost  to  the  consumers 
must  have  fallen,  and  therefore  the  duties  charged  upon  the  foreign 
import  surcharged  the  prices  of  their  domestic  rivals  the  total 
sum  of  $1, 673.760, 000,  or  nine  and  a  half  times  the  amount  of  the 
duties  secured  to  the  treasury  by  the  system  of  raising  revenue  at 
the  custom  houses  ! 

This  is  frightful,  atrocious,  horrible,  and — ridiculous.  But  it  is 
agony  and  oratory  for  the  stump,  and  a  "  big  thing"  in  statistics 
for  the  tongues  and  pens  of  the  Innocents  whose  philosophy  is 
bounded  by  the  multiplication  table. 

But  do  the  experts  among  the  propagandists  of  free  trade  them 
selves  believe  it  ? 

This  same  Commissioner,  in  full  possession  of  his  economic  logic 
and  unmeasurable  arithmetic,  in  this  same  report,  proposes  to  put 
an  aggregate  duty  of  $38,000,000  upon  imported  sugar,  molasses, 
and  melado.  This  is  just  fifty-two  and  one  half  per  cent  upon  their 


232  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

invoice  value  in  the  year  1867-8,  which  being  reflected  upon 
$23.750,000  worth  usually  produced  at  home,  must  enhance  their 
market  price  a  fraction  over  812,000,000.  Add  to  this  the  duty 
itself  and  we  have  a  round  $50,000,000  put  upon  the  cost  of  these 
sweets  to  the  consumers.  This  is  enormous  taxation  indeed ;  for  by 
the  rule  of  the  Commissioner,  if  the  duties  were  wholly  remitted 
we  might  have  had  the  entirety  of  our  supply,  foreign  and  domestic, 
for  883,600,000,  but  under  its  malign  operation,  they  must  neces 
sarily  cost  us  just  850,000,000  more,  that  is  thirty-eight  millions  in 
.duties  upon  the  foreign,  and  twelve  in  enhanced  price  upon  the 
domestic. 

He  treats  woolens  and  worsteds  and  cotton  goods  in  the  same 
way.  Taking  his  own  data  for  the  calculation  he  proposes  to  raise 
830,000.000  upon  cottons,  woolens,  iron,  steel  and  lead,  at  an  ex 
pense  of  894,500,000  of  increased  cost  to  the  consumers  of  these 
foreign  and  domestic  goods.  But  his  schedules  provide  for  a  revenue 
of  8150,000,000  a  year  from  imports.  Without  an  unnecessarily 
tedious  calculation,  I  cannot  give  the  precise  figures  for  the  total 
tax  that  his  proposal  would  inflict  upon  the  consumers,  but  a  safe 
average  would  put  it  at  ten  times  as  much.  We  confront  the 
Revenue  Reformers  with  this  result  of  their  financial  system.  Some 
of  them  having  felt  the  force  of  this  reductio  ad  absurdwn,  bluntly 
propose  to  set  every  foreign  article  free  of  import  duty  which  meets 
in  our  markets  any  quantity  of  the  like  kind  of  domestic  production. 
The  doctrine  which  they  all  profess,  and  the  arguments  they  all  use, 
drive  them,  whether  or  no,  into  this  trap.  They  are  compelled  to 
be  absolute  free  traders  in  respect  to  all  goods,  wares  and  merchan 
dise  which  compete  with  our  own  products,  but  merciless  in  the 
burdens  that  they  must  throw  upon  all  commodities  which  our  own 
soil  and  labor  cannot  produce.  To  see  how  this  principle  would 
work  upon  the  federal  revenue,  we  need  but  look  at  the  several 
classes  of  our  usual  imports,  their  respective  values,  and  yield  of 
duties.  Taking  Mr.  Wells'  schedules,  which  will  be  found  on  the 
one-hundred  and  twenty-eighth  page  of  his  report,  I  see  not  how 
more  than  twenty-five  millions  of  the  hundred  and  fifty  of  revenue 
which  he  expects,  can  possibly  be  derived  from  imports  which  do 
not  compete  with  our  domestic  supplies.  And  it  follows,  if  this 
doctrine  of  reflected  prices  is  true,  or  if  its  advocates  believe  it  to 
be  true,  that  they  are  bound  to  release  our  total  importation  from  all 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PROTECTION.  283 

but  about  twenty-five  millions  of  taxes,  and  throw  something  like 
two-hundred  and  twenty-millions  of  the  necessary  revenue  of  the 
government  upon  domestic  property  and  industry.  They  must  do 
this,  and  they  must  abandon  their  duties  for  revenue,  or,  they  are 
bound  in  reason  and  conscience,  to  withdraw  their  assaults  upon 
protective  duties  as  a  cause  of  a  tenfold  cost  forced  upon  home-made 
goods. 

One  curious  effect  of  the  doctrine  which  we  have  been  pressing 
to  its  consequences  is,  that  the  more  productive  our  industries  may 
be,  the  worse  is  the  effect  of  any  duty  laid  upon  the  rival  products 
of  foreign  origin.  For  instance,  if  we  import  ten  millions  worth  of 
a  class  of  goods  under  a  twenty-five  per  cent  duty,  and  manufacture 
a  hundred  millions  worth  of  the  same  kind,  the  consumers  must 
bear  twenty-five  millions  of  increased  price  upon  the  domestic 
goods ;  but  if  we  import  a  hundred  millions  and  manufacture  only 
ten,  the  consumers  of  the  domestic  article  suffer  only  to  the  extent 
of  two  and  a  half  millions ;  which  is  followed  by  this  unavoidable 
consequence — it  is  ruinously  oppressive  to  the  consumers,  to  tax 
any  article  of  foreign  make  which  we  can  make  at  home ;  which 
must  have  the  further  consequence  of  a  surrender  of  our  markets  to 
anything  and  everything  that  anybody  abroad  may  choose  to  send 
us,  unless  we  can  undersell  them,  with  the  whole  burden  of  our 
national  debt,  and  federal,  state,  and  municipal  taxes  for  a  make 
weight  in  their  favor.  Our  taxes  are  now  not"  less  than  fifteen  per 
cent  of  our  annual  products;  must  we  bear  these  ourselves,  abandon 
the  industries  which  foreigners  may  choose  to  monopolize,  and  give 
a  free  market  to  everybody  except  ourselves  ?  The  doctrine  of  duties 
reflected  upon  home  prices  requires  this.  What  is  the  answer  of 
common  sense  ? 

When  considering  the  effect  of  home  competition  upon  the  prices 
of  foreign  imports,  the  facts  presented  seemed  entirely  sufficient  to 
explode  the  notion  we  have  now  been  confronting  with  its  pre 
posterous,  absurd,  and  every  way  monstrous  results. 

It  would  be  as  tedious  as  unnecessary  to  give  the  instances,  either 
in  particulars  or  summaries,  which  prove  that  protective  duties, 
levied  in  the  strictness  of  the  principle,  always  secure  the  con 
sumers  from  arbitrary  prices ;  always  in  good  time  reduce  prices  to 
the  level  of  general  rewards  of  labor  and  capital ;  always  throw  their 
burden  upon  the  foreign  producer;  when  judiciously  adjusted  to  the 
16 


234  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

conditions  and  capabilities  of  the  people;  often,  indeed,  even  going 
further  and  trenching  upon  the  usual  profits  of  the  producer,  and 
always  repaying  an  hundredfold,  any  nominal  increase  of  prices,  by 
putting  every  variety  of  capability  to  profitable  employment;  and 
increasing  the  wages  and  profits  as  much  to  the  consumers,  who 
are  all  immediately  or  indirectly  interested  in  the  general  benefits 
secured. 

A  very  brief  notice  of  the  experience  of  other  nations,  which  we 
promised  at  the  outset  of  our  treatment  of  the  complex  questions 
involved,  will  sustain  all  that  is  here  claimed  for  the  policy  of 
protective  duties  directed  to  the  support  and  development  of  that 
labor  on  which  all  wealth  depends. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

PROTECTION    IN    THE    HISTORIC    NATIONS. 

Protection  in  England — her  struggle  for  supremacy  in  industry  and  trade ;  her 
rise  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  rank  in  Europe. — Measures  taken  to  make 
her  "  the  workshop  of  the  world.'' — How  she  built  up  her  woolen  manufactures 
by  five  centuries  of  protective  duties — prohibitions,  bonuses,  and  penalties — and 
her  iron  industry  by  similar  means  during  a  period  of  over  one  hundred  and 
twenty  years. — In  wool,  iron,  and  coal  she  possessed  natural  advantages,  and 
free  traders  credit  her  success  in  these  industries  to  this  cause  ;  but  by  pro 
tection  she  naturalized  her  cotton  manufactures,  and  enlarged  them  till  their 
products  outmeasure  the  value  of  all  her  other  exports. — Beginning  the  business 
in  1740  by  prohibiting  the  oriental  fabrics  which  sold  at  three  times  less  price 
than  the  domestic  product,  and  maintaining  the  defense  of  the  home  industry 
until  all  successful  competition  was  impossible. — In  1846  free  trade  was  pro 
claimed  by  statute,  but  England  never  remitted  or  abated  a  protective  duty  till 
her  own  supremacy  defied  all  rivalry  in  her  home  markets. — By  countervailing 
duties  she  still  defends  her  burdened  industries,  and  her  present  policy  is  just  as 
protective  as  her  interests  require. — The  new  Empire  of  GERMANY  owes  its  ex 
istence  and  its  eminence  to  the  protection  measures  of  the  Zollverein. — History 
of  protection  in  BELGIUM. — The  natural  resources  of  the  Kingdom,  the  policy  of 
trade  employed,  and  the  provision  made  for  the  prosperity  of  her  manufactures, 
agriculture,  and  commerce. — Her  population  the  densest  in  the  world,  and  its 
growth  double  that  of  Great  Britain,  and  her  emigrants  nineteen  times  less. — 
Protection  in  FRANCE  maintained  the  most  wasteful  of  governments,  educated 
the  artisans  which  initiated  tho  skilled  industries  of  all  Europe,  and  has  sus 
tained  her  finances  through  the  revolutions  of  a  century. — The  protective  and 
prohibitive  policy  of  RUSSIA  has  raised  the  kingdom  from  barbarism  to  the 
rank  of  a  first-rate  power  in  Europe,  and  emancipated  twenty  millions  of  serfs. 
The  opponents  challenged  to  find  in  all  history  a  nation  that  has  risen  to  the 
front  rank,  or  any  one  that  has  maintained  a  high  position,  except  such  as 
have  steadily  maintained  a  protective  policy  adapted  to  their  national  conditions 
and  international  relations. — Free  trade  in  the  history  of  nations — TURKEY. — 
Free  trade  proclaimed  by  the  Sultan  three  centuries  ago. — Then  Turkish  supe 
riority  defied  competition  in  production. — Modern  agencies  have  so  cheapened 
products,  that  Turkey,  unable  to  command  them,  has  lost  not  only  her  foreign 
markets  but  is  compelled  to  surrender  her  home  commerce  to  foreigners. — The 
"sick  man's"  complaint  explained. — His  dissolution  waiting  only  for  agreement 
among  the  dissectors. — Helpless  herself,  and  no  help  from  her  free  trade  pro 
tector. — How  her  trade  has  declined. — How  she  supplies  her  exchequer,  and 

235 


236  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

debases  her  current  coin. — Ireland,  effects  of  the  Act  of  Union  ;  driven  by  its 
free  trade  provisions  from  the  workshop  to  the  potato  field ;  famine,  pestilence 
and  emigration  the  consequences,  and  England  hopeful  of  the  extinction  of  the 
nation. — LVDIA  another  victim  of  English  free  trade;  half  a  million  starved  in 
a  few  months  in  the  granary  of  the  world — multitudes,  who  formerly  produced 
the  finest  cotton  tissues,  driven  from  skilled  industries  to  the  lowest  drudgery  of 
agriculture,  and  famines  increased  in  frequency  and  extent  for  more  than  half 
a  century  under  British  rule. — PORTUGAL  under  a  free  trade  treaty  with  England 
precipitated  from  her  pride  of  place  among  the  nations  to  the  condition  of  a 
burden  upon  the  hands  that  ruined  her.  Differences  of  race,  religion,  and 
geographic  position  will  not  explain  the  fortunes  and  misfortunes  of  the  nations 
here  reviewed. — Only  by  one  rule  can  they  be  classified — the  one  class  having 
all  protected  their  domestic  industries ;  the  other,  surrendered  them  to  the 
domination  of  foreigners. 

WE  open  this  section  of  our  argument  upon  the  vantage  ground 
of  the  wide  world's  experience.  The  testimony  of  all  history 
proves  this  broad  proposition  :  not  a  single  nation  on  the  earth  has 
attained  a  leading  position ;  not  a  nation  in  the  past  or  present  has 
maintained  the  rank  that  entitles  it  to  be  called  a  "  power,"  except 
those  who  have  firmly  maintained  an  adapted  policy  of  protection 
in  the  direction  of  their  international  relations.  England,  being 
one  of  the  very  best  of  the  examples  in  proof,  is  entitled  to  our 
first  consideration. 

Every  one  who  knows  anything  of  her  history,  knows  that  through 
a  long  struggle  she  raised  her  commerce  and  manufactures  from  the 
lowest  to  the  very  highest  rank  among  the  nations,  not  of  Europe 
only,  but  of  the  world.  Her  chances  for  attaining  and  maintaining 
supremacy  in  production  and  trade  in  an  even-handed  struggle, 
under  a  let-alone  policy,  were  simply  hopeless.  Great  Britain  oc 
cupies  a  territory  not  more  than  one-fourteenth  of  the  extent,  and 
has,  even  now,  a  population  equal  to  only  one-eighth  of  the  natural 
labor  force  of  her  European  rivals — Russia,  in  f]urope,  being  excluded 
from  the  computation.  The  one-half  of  these  peoples  were  far  in 
advance  of  her  at  the  beginning  of  the  strife.  Such  were  the  odds 
against  her,  and  such  the  proved  capabilities  of  her  opponents. 
How  did  she  address  herself  to  the  great  work  of  self-development, 
and  achieve  her  grand  success?  By  following  the  policy  which 
she  now  urges  upon  the  nations  still  in  the  conditions  from  which 
she  herself  has  risen,  and  in  her  progress  passing  through  such  a 
series  of  stages  as  represent  all  the  varied  conditions  of  her  con 
temporaries  in  the  present  ?  Did  she  entertain  such  hallucinations 


PROTECTION    IN    NATIONAL    HISTORY.  237 

as  we  get  now  from  free  trade  theorists,  poets,  transcendentalists, 
factors,  brokers,  and  smugglers  ?  Did  she  aim  at  universal  mastery 
through  cosmopolitanism  in  trade  ?  On  the  contrary,  she  went 
resolutely  to  work  under  such  a  system  of  protective  measures  as 
challenges  comparison,  and  by  them  achieved  her  grand  successes. 
These  measures  may  be  arrayed  under  the  following  heads :  pro 
hibition  of  competing  imports;  prohibition  of  the  export  of  raw 
materials;  bounties  upon  production  and  exportation;  restraints 
upon  colonial  manufactures;  differential  duties  in  favor  of  her  own 
commerce ;  sumptuary  laws  encouraging  such  kinds  of  production 
as  seemed  to  need  help  in  that  form ;  active  and  substantial  aid  to 
the  immigration  of  artisans  from  the  continent;  prohibition  of  the 
immigration  of  her  own  skilled  workmen,  and  of  the  export  of 
machinery;  wars  undertaken  with  the  sole  object  of  opening  up 
and  monopolizing  foreign  markets,  and,  every  other  species  of  regu 
lations  and  interferences  which  promised  in  any  way  to  make  her 
"the  workshop  of  the  world."  All  this  is  known  in  a  general  way. 
The  particulars  would  astonish  any  one  to  whom  they  are  unfa 
miliar.  From  the  year  1331  down  to  1834  the  woolen  manufac 
tures  were  steadily  protected ;  beginning  with  fines,  maimings,  im 
prisonment,  and  death  as  the  penalties  for  exporting  native  wool  or 
importing  foreign  cloth,  and  maintaining  such  penalties  in  force  for 
quite  four  centuries.  In  1746  these  were  softened  down  to  trans 
portation  for  seven  years.  [See  Blackstone's  Commentaries,  title, 
Owling.]  The  latest  of  these  penalties  was  not  repealed  till  1825. 
Here  we  have  an  "  infant  manufacture,"  nursed  through  a  period  of 
five  hundred  years,  coming  to  a  confident  maturity  which  now 
mocks  at  a  rival  in  its  cradle  which  has  never  yet  had  ten  .consecu 
tive  years  of  fostering  care  ! 

Iron  imported  in  foreign  vessels  was  charged,  as  early  as  the  year 
1710,  with  a  duty  of  £2,  10s.  per  ton,  which  was  raised  at  suc 
cessive  periods,  till  in  1819  it  stood  at  £6, 10s.  in  English,  and  £7, 
18s.  6(/.  in  foreign  vessels.  This  was  adequate  as  well  as  earnest 
protection  of  the  domestic  manufacture,  for  as  early  as  seven  years 
after  the  last-mentioned  date  England  was  actually  producing  her 
own  iron  at  £3,  13s.  cheaper  than  the  cheapest  of  her  competitors 
in  all  Europe.  Being  thus  secure  against  all  rivalry  in  the  home 
market  the  duty  was  reduced  in  1834  to  £1  per  ton. 

England's  command  of    the  finest  wool  at  an  early  day,  and  her 


238  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

possession  of  iron  ore  and  mineral  coal,  have  been  offered  as  the 
sufficient  cause  of  her  great  proficiency  in  their  manufacture. 
These  were  her  natural  advantages,  and  the  justification  of  her 
great  endeavor  to  improve  them.  We  have  shown  the  means  em 
ployed  to  secure  success.  That  the  mere  possession  of  the  raw 
material  is  not  the  whole  explanation  is  shown  by  a  still  greater 
triumph  in  another  department  of  her  established  supremacy : 
England  grows  not  a  pound  of  cotton,  yet  in  I860  the  real  value 
of  her  exports  of  cotton  goods  amounted  to  fifty-two  millions  of 
pounds  sterling,  while  those  of  iron,  steel,  wool,  machinery,  and 
silk  amounted  to  no  more  in  the  aggregate  than  forty-one  millions. 

Here  then,  we  have  a  case  in  which  nature  did  nothing  for 
England,  but  in  which  she  managed  to  naturalize  an  utterly  foreign 
manufacture,  so  as  to  make  its  products  exceed  the  half  of  her 
total  manufactures  and  products  exported  to  foreign  countries.  Her 
earliest  supply  of  the  material  was  from  Cyprus  and  Smyrna,  after 
wards  from  India  and  China.  Until  1790  America  had  sent  her 
none.  When  she  commenced  the  manufacture  of  cottons,  say 
about  the  year  1740,  the  East  India  article  could  be  afforded  at  less 
than  one-third  of  the  price  of  the  domestic,  and,  had  its  importation 
been  permitted,  the  British  manufacture  could  not  have  fought  its 
way  into  the  home  market.  But  notwithstanding  the  inequality  of 
the  contending  parties,  in  the  natural  order  of  things,  the  exotic 
character  of  the  raw  material,  the  freight  upon  the  import,  which 
was  then  enormously  high,  and  the  unparalleled  perfection  of  the  for 
eign  art,  the  people  found  a  way  of  meeting  the  exigency.  It  was 
done  by  an  act  of  Parliament,  which  reads  thus :  u  Calicoes,  painted, 
stained,  or  dyed  in  Persia,  China,  or  the  East  Indies,  shall  not  be 
worn  or  used  in  this  kingdom;"  and  further,  u  all  such  goods, 
whether  mixed,  sewed,  or  made  up  together  for  sale  with  any 
other  goods,  shall  be  forfeited;  and  the  person  in  whose  custody, 
knowing  thereof,  the  same  shall  be  found,  or  that  shall  dispose 
thereof,  shall  forfeit  £200."  The  British  tariff  act,  passed  in  1819, 
still  prohibited  the  manufactures  of  all  countries  east  of  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope,  and  charged  those  of  Europe  fifty  to  sixty-seven  per 
cent. 

About  the  year  1818,  the  application  of  steam  power,  and  the 
employment  of  the  machinery  which  has  so  immensely  increased  and 
cheapened  production,  was  fairly  established  in  England.  For  full 


PROTECTION    IN    NATIONAL    HISTORY.  239 

twenty  years  afterwards  she  maintained  her  protective  system,  and 
then,  when  it  was  rendered  unnecessary  by  the  superiority  which  it 
had  produced,  it  was  abandoned,  and  the  English  authorities  began 
to  propagate  those  doctrines  of  free  trade  which  her  matured  indus 
tries  could  well  bear.  In  1846,  the  new  policy  suited  to  the  new 
aspect  of  the  nation's  business  was  installed  in  the  statutes  of  the 
British  Parliament;  that  is,  all  that  is  intended  and  actual  in  the 
policy  became  the  public  law  of  the  land  ;  but  the  operative  pro 
visions  amount  to  nothing  more  than  the  opening  of  the  British 
ports  and  markets  freely  to  all  commerce  which  her  oicn  supremacy 
in  production  EXCLUDES  !  As  we  have  already  shown,  the  existing 
system  of  countervailing  duties  is  still  preserved  to  protect  such  of 
her  manufacturing  interests  as  require  them;  and  we  are  justified 
by  the  facts  in  saying  that,  her  whole  system  of  commercial  regula 
tions  have  been  for  five  centuries,  and  remain  to  this  day,  the  most 
complete,  adequate,  and  successful  instance  of  the  employment  of 
the  protective  policy  that  can  be  found  in  history.  With  one  other 
word  we  conclude  this  brief  review — England  never  once,  and 
never  in  any  instance,  repealed,  or  remitted,  or  abated  a  protective 
duty  on  any  foreign  goods  until  after,  and  generally  long  after,  it 
had  accomplished  all  its  objects,  and  left  her  safe  from  all  compe 
tition. 

PROTECTION    IN    OTHER    COUNTRIES    OF    EUROPE. 

For  the  wonderful  results  that  have  crowned  the  policy  in  the 
German  States  now  included  in  the  customs  union  of  Prussia,  com 
monly  called  the  Zollverein,  we  must  content  ourselves  with  what  we 
have  said  in  our  strictures  upon  the  system  of  <.id  valorem  duties,  in 
a  preceding  chapter,  and  elsewhere  when  the  history  of  the  German 
industrial  system  and  its  achievements  were  in  point. 

Our  whole  case  might  be  safely  rested  upon  the  facts  of  the 
industrial  and  commercial  history  of  the  little  kingdom  of  Belgium 
alone.  In  territory  she  is  only  a  trifle  larger  than  the  State  of 
Maryland,  and  has  not  quite  one-fourth  of  the  area  of  New  York  or 
Pennsylvania.  In  these  limits  she  has  a  population  of  four  millions 
nine  hundred  thousand,  which  gives  four  hundred  and  thirty-three 
to  the  square  mile,  which  is  full  twenty-five  per  cent  more  dense 
than  that  of  England  and  \Yales,  and  nearly  thrice  the  density  of 
Massachusetts.  The  productive  industry  required  to  support  such 


240  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

a  population  is  presumptively  very  great.  She  is  well  supplied 
with  raw  material,  and  obviously  is  not  stinted  in  labor  power. 
The  success  of  the  Belgians  in  the  manufacture  of  silk,  glass, 
linen,  and  woolens,  has  given  them  a  world  wide  reputation;  and 
her  carpets  and  laces  are  known  as  the  finest  in  foreign  markets, 
and  are  found  there  in  amazing  abundance.  Small  as  the  territory 
is,  it  combines  in  a  remarkable  degree,  and  in  remarkable  balance, 
capabilities  for  agricultural,  manufacturing,  and  commercial  in 
dustry.  Her  customs  system  shows  how  wisely  she  has  guarded  all 
these  interests.  She  secures  a  home  market  for  her  raw  materials 
by  defending  her  manufactures  adequately.  She  finds  a  home 
market  for  her  breadstuffs  and  provisions  by  employing  all  her 
hands  busily  in  every  form  of  converting  industry;  she  fosters  her 
skilled  industries  by  barring  out  all  competition  with  their  pro 
ducts  ;  she  favors  a  very  large  transit  trade  by  offering  every  induce 
ment  to  the  bordering  nations;  and  to  foreigners  trading  with  them, 
making  her  roads  a  general  thoroughfare ;  her  lands  are  cultivated 
like  garden  grounds  ;  her  factories  are  alive  with  industry,  and  are 
carrying  away  the  iron  trade  of  northern  and  eastern  Europe  from 
England;  her  foreign  commerce  grew,  after  it  was  liberated  from 
the  dominion  of  Holland  and  Spain  by  the  French  in  1830,  till  it 
stood,  in  1860,  at  double  the  proportion  of  the  United  States;  and 
Belgium  is  now  about  ready  for  free  trade  :  she  has  put  herself, 
through  wise  and  persistent  protection,  into  the  list  of  the  nations 
that  no  longer  need  any  defenses  against  her  industrial  and  commer 
cial  rivals.  \ 

I  must  not  detain  the  reader  with  a  statement  of  the  tariff  rates 
which  have  secured  all  these  results.  A  specimen  or  two  will  give 
the  spirit  of  the  whole.  Raw  tobacco  is  admitted  at  nine-tenths  of 
one  cent  per  pound — the  manufactured  is  charged  three  cents ;  raw 
sugar  at  two  cents  per  ton — the  manufactured  or  refined  must 
carry  $185.68  per  ton;  raw  wool,  free — woolen  manufactures, 
charged  ten,  twelve,  twenty-one,  twenty-six,  and  thirty-two  cents 
per  pound.  There  is  not  an  item  in  all  the  schedules  of  the 
Belgian  tariff  that  gives  any  more  countenance  to  free  trade  or 
any  of  its  maxims  than  tho.se  which  are  here*  quoted. 

The  differential  duties  charged  upon  imports  m  foreign  vessels, 
in  favor  of  her  own,  are,  in  the  average,  quite  one  hundred  per  cent, 
which  have  had  the  effect  of  preserving  for  her  own  mercantile 


PROTECTION    IN    NATIONAL    HISTORY.  241 

navy  her  whole.1  trade   in  domestic   exports  and  foreign  imports  for 
consumption. 

It  is  worth  noting  here  that  Belgium  increased  her  population 
sixteen  per  cent  between  the  years  1840  and  1850,  while  the 
United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  grew  but  a  scant  eight  per 
cent  iu  the  same  time.  Protection  against  free  trade  in  the  matter 
of  population,  with  all  the  odds  of  density  against  Belgium  under 
the  trial. 

Again:  the  immigrants  to  the  United  States  during  the  period 
of  1840-60  from  Belgium  were  equal  to  only  two-tenths  of  one 
per  cent  of  her  population  in  1860;  while  those  from  the  United 
Kingdom  amounted  to  three  and  eight-tenths  per  cent  of  hers ;  so, 
the  chance  of  living  at  home  was  just  nineteen  times  better  in  pro 
tective  Belgium  than  in  free  trade  England. 

For  the  growth  of  wealth  in  France  we  beg  leave  to  refer  the 
reader  to  our  fifth  chapter,  where  its  rate  and  amount  in  the  first 
half  of  the  present  century  are  given  in  sufficient  detail  to  exhibit 
the  effect  of  her  system  of  international  commerce,  which  J.  B.  Say 
thus  correctly  describes,  "  for  thirty  years  nearly  every  law  passed 
on  custom  house  matters  has  been  intended  either  to  establish  or  to 
consolidate  the  system  of  protection  and  prohibition."  Writing 
in  1826,  this  high  authority  among  free  traders,  says,  u  France  at 
present  contains  the  most  beautiful  manufactures  of  silk  and  wool  in 
the  world,  and  is  probably  indebted  for  them  to  the  wise  encourage 
ment  of  Colbert's  administration.  He  advanced  to  the  manufactures 
two  thousand  francs  for  every  loom  at  work,  and,  by  the  way,  this 
species  of  encouragement  has  a  particular  advantage — the  bounty 
enters  into  reproduction."  It  will  be  recollected  that  Colbert  was 
Intendant  of  Finance  and  Minister  of  State  under  Louis  XIV.  His 
policy  supported  the  most  expensive  and  wasteful  of  French 
monarchs  in  the  seventeenth  century;  and  it  did  more,  it  educated 
more  than  half  a  million  of  those  artisans  who  in  1685,  upon  the 
revocation  <.f  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  fled  from  France,  and  settling 
in  Switzerland,  Germany,  Holland  and  England,  created  there  the 
industries  which  enriched  the  countries  of  their  adoption. 

The  prosperity  of  manufactures  in  France  is  too  well  known  to 
require  any  description  here ;  the  results  concerning  the  national 
welfare  are  unhappily  too  much  confused  by  the  political  despotisms 
and  popular  revolutions  which  make  up  the  history  of  the  nation  for 


242  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

now  above  three-quarters  of  a  century,  to  allow  of  any  very  clear 
examination  within  our  limits.  But  this  much  must  be  admitted — 
under  the  most  absolutely  restrictive  system,  maintained  from  the 
earliest  days  of  the  first  Bonaparte  to  the  fall  of  the  third,  France 
has  advanced  greatly  in  natural  and  individual  wealth,  and  has 
grown  through  the  whole  career  of  her  crazy  political  disturbances 
to  be  the  leading  manufacturing  nation  of  Europe.  Her  terrible 
history  would  have  been  passed  unnoticed  but  for  the  fact  that  her 
industrial  system  has  revived  her  fortunes  after  every  revolution, 
and  kept  her  public  credit  quite  as  high  as  that  of  any  other  Euro 
pean  State  except  that  of  England.  The  French  three  per  cents 
were  up  to  seventy  on  the  hundred  immediately  before  the  outbreak 
of  the  late  War  with  Prussia,  when  our  own  sixes  were  not  above 
ninety,  and  our  fives  were  but  eighty-six.  In  nothing  has  she  had 
either  wise  or  stable  government  except  in  the  defense  of  her 
industries,  and  this  has  kept  her  from  utter  destruction,  and  will 
restore  her  again  when  the  present  riot  is  quelled. 

The  Russian  policy,  like  that  of  France,  has  long  been  sternly  and 
guardedly  defensive  of  the  labor  of  the  Empire  against  the  invasion 
of  products  from  Western  Europe.  Under  this  system,  it  is  enough 
to  say,  she  has  emancipated  twenty  millions  of  her  serfs,  and  has 
risen,  within  the  memory  of  living  men,  from  barbarism  and  con 
tempt  to  the  rank  of  a  "power"  which  has  no  equal  in  the  Eastern 
hemisphere  except  the  new  empire  of  Germany. 

A  volume  would  be  required  for  a  full  array  of  the  evidence 
which  could  be  adduced  in  proof  of  the  proposition  advanced  at  the 
beginning  of  this  section — that,  not  a  nation  on  the  earth  has 
attained  a  leading  position  except  those  who  have  firmly  maintained 
a  policy  of  protection  adapted  to  their  national  conditions  and  inter 
national  relations.  Will  the  disputants  try  to  find  one  ? 

FREE    TRADE    IN    THE    HISTORIC    NATIONS. 

Free  trade  has  had  a  fair  trial  in  the  old  world.  Its  history  is 
indelibly  recorded  in  its  results.  We  propose  now  to  show  from 
free-trade  authorities  the  effects  of  their  favorite  policy  in  those 
countries  of  Europe  and  Asia  in  which  it  has  had  its  most  complete 
demonstration. 

Three  centuries  ago,  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  proclaimed  unlimited 


PROTECTION    IN    NATIONAL    HISTORY.  243 

freedom  of  foreign  trade,  retaining  a  bare  five  per  cent  duty  or 
port  charge  upon  imports,  which  it  seems  has  long  since  been 
reduced  to  three  per  cent.  Turkish  superiority  of  skill  and  expe 
rience  was  more  than  a  match  for  the  rude  industries  of  western 
Europe  in  the  old-time  manufacturing  methods  and  agencies;  but 
upon  the  introduction  of  the  modern  improvements,  which  almost 
miraculously  multiply  commodities  by  means  of  steam  and  ma 
chinery,  the  oriental  races  were  exposed  to  a  destructive  competi 
tion  in  all  their  markets,  foreign  and  domestic,  and  Turkey  fell  from 
its  preeminence,  and  became  the  "  sick  man"  of  the  nations.  The 
countries  which  have  availed  themselves  of  the  modern  appliances 
in  production,  and  protected  their  labor  interests  from  foreign 
invasion,  have  nothing  to  do  now  but  divide  the  apocalyptic  dragon's 
dominions  among  themselves  when  they  can  agree  upon  the  distri 
bution.  Free-trade  England  will  make  no  resistance;  her  occupa 
tion  of  the  protectorate,  like  Othello's,  is  gone,  and  she  will  get 
none  of  the  spoils,  nor  even  save  her  plighted  honor. 

Even  so  lately  as  fifty  years  ago  we  were  wearing  Turkish  goods 
in  the  backwoods  of  America,  but  now  the  subjects  of  the  Sultan 
cannot  hold  their  own  markets  against  foreigners.  J.  R.  McCulloch 
says  :  "  The  Turkish  manufacturers  of  muslins,  ginghams,  handker 
chiefs,  etc.,  have  suffered  severely  from  the  extraordinary  importa 
tion  of  British  goods,  so  much  so,  that  of  six  hundred  looms  for 
muslins  in  Scutari,  in  1812,  only  forty  remained  in  1831 ;  and  of 
two  thousand  weaving  establishments  in  Tournovo,  in  1812,  there 
were  only  two  hundred  in  1831."  Again,  he  says:  "Though  our 
[British]  muslins  and  chintzes  be  inferior  in  fineness  to  those  of  the 
East,  and  our  red  dye  (a  color  in  great  esteem  in  Turkey,  Persia, 
etc.,)  be  inferior  in  brilliancy,  these  defects  are  more  than  balanced 
by  the  greater  cheapness  of  our  goods;  and  from  Smyrna  to  Canton, 
from  Madras  to  Samarcand,  we  are  everywhere  supplanting  the 
native  fabrics."  Of  Turkey's  foreign  trade  he  says,  "the  exports 
are  very  trifling — ships  carrying  goods  to  Constantinople  either 
return  in  ballast  or  get  return  cargoes  at  Smyrna.  Odessa,  etc.;"  and 
of  the  interior  traffic  he  says:  "the  trade  is  in  the  hands  of  Jew 
brokers,  some  of  whom  are  rich."  Duties  upon  imports;  three  per  cent, 
and  twelve  per  cent  upon  domestic  exports,  explain  the  condition  of 
the  revenue,  and  its  pinching  necessities;  but  the  stronger  proof  is 
in  the  desperate  resort  to  a  rapid  debasement  of  the  government 


244  QUESTIONS    OP    THE    DAY. 

/ 

coinage.  For  this  again  we  have  McCul loch's  authority — "  The 
Turkish  coin  has  been  much  degraded.  The  piastre,  which  a  few 
years  ago  was  worth  two  shillings  sterling,  is  now  (in  1838)  worth 
little  more  than  four  pence."  The  Turk's  sickness  is  explained. 
He  has  caught  the  Irish  disease,  imported  in  manufactured  goods 
from  Liverpool. 

Ireland  was,  not  very  long  ago,  as  it  had  been  for  ages,  the  seat 
of  learning  and  of  the  useful  arts,  in  an  eminent  degree.  In  the 
last  quarter  of  the  last  century,  the  books  printed  in  Dublin,  and 
the  woolens,  linens,  and  cottons,  of  the  Irish  looms,  were  common 
in  all  the  markets  of  Christendom;  but  the  union  with  Great 
Britain  was  effected  in  1801,  and  in  1821  the  last  traces  of  national 
defense  against  the  overpowering  competition  of  the  kingdom  that 
had  swallowed  her  up  were  effaced.  By  the  terms  of  the  union  her 
almost  prohibitory  duties  upon  English  calicoes  and  muslins  were  to- 
expire  in  1808,  and  those  upon  woolens  in  1821.  Look  at  the 
results:  in  1800  there  were  in  Dublin  five  thousand  hands  employed 
in  woolen  manufactures;  in  1840,  only  six  hundred  and  two.  In 
making  carpets,  seven  hundred  hands  at  work  in  1800;  in  1840^ 
none.  These  are  the  average  proportions  of  the  respective  dates  for 
the  silk-weavers,  calico-weavers,  and  cotton-spinners.  England 
wanted  cheap  labor  and  cheap  food,  and  free  trade  with  Ireland 
answered  the  intention.  But  how  did  they  answer  Ireland  ?  Thrown 
out  of  mechanical  employment,  the  Irish  laborer  was  driven  to 
spade-husbandry  and  potato-raising,  until  the  potatoes  sickened 
under  the  forcing  system  which  necessity  compelled,  and  the  soil 
got  sick  of  the  spade-men;  and  famine,  pestilence,  arid  emigration, 
quartered  the  population  between  the  years  1841  and  1851!  The 
London  Times  rather  likes  this  situation  of  things;  it  says,  "The 
tribe  of  Celts  will  soon  fulfill  the  great  law  of  Providence,  which 
seems  to  enjoin  and  reward  the  union  of  races.  It  will  mix  with 
the  Anglo-Americans,  and  l>e  knoicn  no  more  as  a  Jealous  and  sepa 
rate  people.  Its  present  place  will  be  occupied  by  the  more  mixed, 
more  docile,  and  more  serviceable  race  which  has  long  borne  the 
yoke  of  sturdy  industry  in  this  island,  which  can  submit  to  a  master 
and  obey  the  law"  The  same  paper  at  another  time,  said  :  "  For  a 
whole  generation  man  has  been  a  drug  in  Ireland,  and  population  a 
nuisance. "  Mark  the  date — a  whole  generation,  that  is,  since  the 
free  trade  provisions  of  the  Act  of  Union  came  fully  into  play.  And 


PROTECTION    IN    NATIONAL    HISTORY.  245 

mark  the  avowed  intention  :  Irish  extinction  to  be  accomplished  by 
starvation  and  expatriation. 

George  Thompson,  in  a  speech  delivered  in  the  House  of  Com 
mons  fifteen  years  ago,  describing  the  results  of  British  rule  in 
INDIA,  said :  "At  the  close  of  the  last  century,  cotton  abounded, 
and  to  so  great  an  extent  was  the  labor  of  men,  women,  and  chil 
dren  applied  to  its  conversion  into  cloth,  that  even  with  their  im 
perfect  machinery  they  not  only  supported  the  home  demand  for 
the  beautiful  tissues  of  Dacca,  and  the  coarser  products  of  Western 
India,  but  they  exported  to  other  parts  of  the  world  no  less  than 
two  hundred  millions  of  pieces  per  annum." 

In  1813  the  trade  of  India  was  thrown  open  and  the  native 
industries  were  exposed  to  unlimited  competition.  At  the  end  of 
twenty  years  after,  the  men,  women,  and  children  had  been  driven 
from  the  workshops  to  the  fields,  and  all  demand  for  labor  was  at 
an  end  except  in  raising  rice,  cotton,  indigo,  and  opium.  Mr. 
Thompson's  picture  of  India  under  free-trade  rule  has  such  free 
dashes  of  the  pencil  as  these  :  "  Some  of  the  finest  tracts  of  land 
have  been  forsaken  and  given  up  to  the  untamed  beasts  of  the  jungle. 
The  motives  to  industry  have  been  destroyed.  Go  with  me  to  the 
northwest  provinces  of  the  Bengal  Presidency  and  I  will  show  you 
the  bleaching  skeletons  of  five  hundred  thousand  human  beings 
who  perished  from  hunger  in  the  space  of  a  few  short  months ; 
yes,  and  of  hunger  in  what  has  been  called  the  granary  of  the 
world.  Famines  have  continued  to  increase  in  frequency  and  ex 
tent  under  our  sway  for  more  than  half  a  century." 

PORTUGAL  is  another  witness  to  the  character  and  influence  of  the 
policy  urged  upon  us  by  the  people  aspiring  to  the  mastery  of  com 
merce  and  the  monopoly  of  all  the  skilled  industries  of  the  wide 
world.  In  1703,  Portugal,  so  lately  the  leading  commercial  nation  of 
Europe,  concluded  a  treaty  with  England,  by  which  she  bound  her 
self  to  admit  English  wares  into  her  ports  at  a  fifteen  per  cent  duty, 
for  the  favor  of  an  English  tax  upon  her  wines  one-third  less  than 
that  imposed  upon  the  wines  of  France.  Mr.  McCulloch  reports 
the  inevitable  results  thus:  "  Formerly  Lisbon  had  about  four  hun 
dred  ships  of  from  five  to  six  hundred  tons  burthen  employed  in  the 
trade  with  South  America,  but  at  present  there  are  riot  above  fifty 
ships  engaged  in  foreign  trade,  and  of  these  the  burthen  does  not 
exceed  150  tons.  The  produce  of  Portugal  sent  to  foreign  coun- 


246  QUESTIONS  or  THE  DAY. 

tries  is  almost  entirely  conveyed  in  foreign  ships."  Mr.  Cobden, 
another  free  trade  oracle,  summed  up  the  whole  story,  about  fifteen 
years  ago,  when  he  said  that  "  Turkey  and  Portugal  had  become  a 
burden  and  a  curse  to  England."  She  had  made  them  her  depend 
encies,  not  by  force  of  arms,  but  by  force  of  trade,  and  now  they 
were  upon  her  hands  like  the  worn-out  slaves  of  a  Southern  planta 
tion  under  the  old  regime. 

The  ready  answer  to  this  indictment  of  the  policy,  and  of  the 
nation  which  has  employed  it  in  the  destruction  of  so  many  other 
nations,  is  that  the  Turks  are  Mahometans,  the  Indians  are  Pagans, 
the  Irish  are  Celts,  and  the  Portuguese  are,  if  nothing  else,  Catho 
lics;  but  the  French  are  at  once  Celts,  Catholics,  and  infidels ;  the 
Russians  are  not  Catholics;  the  Belgians  are  almost  exclusively 
Catholic,  and  the  Germans  are  both  Catholics  and  Protestants. 
Differences  of  faith  and  of  race,  differences  of  national  conditions 
and  habits,  will  not  serve  for  the  causes  of  the  different  economic 
fortunes  of  all  these  peoples.  The  fortunate  among  them  are  not 
distinguished  from  the  unfortunates  by  any  likeness  among  them 
selves  of  national  character,  or  of  geographic  conditions.  The 
victims  are,  like  those  of  the  small  pox,  of  every  variety  of  consti 
tution,  undefended  or  unprotected  by  vaccination. 

And  how  does  it  happen  that  peoples  unchanged  in  faith,  or 
place,  or  character,  who  were  once  first  in  the  ranks  of  industry 
and  commerce,  are  now  last  and  lowest?  and  how  does  it  happen, 
also,  that  each  and  all  of  them  are  in  the  one  category  of  peoples  who 
have  lost  the  command  of  their  home  markets  by  surrendering 
them  to  the  control  of  cheaper  producers  ? 

There  is  nothing  clearer  or  truer  in  human  reasoning  than  that 
labor  is  the  source  of  wealth,  and  that  its  freedom  and  diversifica 
tion  are  the  measure  of  its  productiveness  ;  and  an  infraction  of  this 
law  of  national  life,  must  be  followed  by  its  natural  and  necessary 
penalties.  The  suggestion  of  faith  or  race  or  any, other  specialty  in 
explanation  of  results,  is  utterly  unphilosophical,  and  foolishly  im 
pertinent.  Universal  history  testifies  that  not  a  single  nation  on  the 
globe,  in  the  whole  range  of  history,  has  reached  independence  and 
wealth ;  not  a  nation  even  holds  the  rank  attained,  but  such  as  have 
firmly  maintained  a  protective  policy  in  the  regulation  of  their  inter 
national  trade. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 


QUARANTYISM. 

GuARANTYis.\r :  Civilization,  not  differentially  defined. — The  present  age  a  tran 
sition  phase  of  society  requiring  a  distinctive  name. — Precedent  conditions  of 
civilization. — Societary  movements,  their  characteristics — Patriarchisrn,  Barbar 
ism,  Greek  Democracies;  growth  in  bondage;  Feudalism,  uprising  of  the  masses 
— rights  demanded,  not  duties  conceded,  in  the  revolt. — Support  of  the  poor  and 
education  by  the  State,  questioned. — Natural  rights  grounded  in  selfhood. — 
Reign  of  individualism  relaxing;  at  war  with  association. — Rights  and  duties 
reconciled  in  guarantyism,  corresponding  movements  in  religion,  in  civil  gov 
ernment,  and  the  military  system. — Achievements  in  arts  and  sciences,  not  the 
distinction  of  the  last  hundred  years.— Societary  reformation,  the  glory  of  the 
present  age — in  politics — in  organized  diffusion  of  Christian  knowledge  by 
protestants — temperance  reform — anti-slavery — public  schools — statistics  of 
education — public  libraries,  periodicals. — Charities. — Diminution  of  capital 
crimes;  corporal  punishments;  imprisonment  for  debts. — Insurances;  history 
of;  recent  increase  of. — SAVINGS  BANKS  in  England:  happy  influences;  in  the 
United  States;  vast  aggregate  of  deposits;  statistics;  indicate  the  associative 
impulse. —  Corporations  the  type  of  cooperative  unions  ;  material  and  spiritual 
springs  of  cooperative  association. — Cooperation  in  bondage — in  freedom. — 
Labor's  difficulties. — Selfhood  becomes  social — the  gain  leads  to  the  good  of  the 
principle. — Beneficial  Societies,  vast  accumulation  of  the  fund  in  England. — 
No  reports  of  beneficial  societies  in  the  United  States. — Provisions  and  manage 
ment — easy  rates  and  liberal  reliefs — moral  influence. — They  grow  rich. 

CIVILIZATION  has  no  logical  or  distinctive  definition.  Writers, 
concerned  with  it  as  their  special  subject,  have  not  even  attempted 
to  determine  what  it  is,  and  what  it  is  not.  It  is  vaguely  recognized  as 
a  phase  of  human  society,  and  it  is  ranked  as  the  last  and  highest  form 
yet  developed ;  but  it  is  not  differenced  by  any  of  its  exactest  descrip 
tions.  There  is  moreover,  a  lack  of  philosophic  accuracy  in  treating 
it  as  a  phase,  or  a  different  form,  or  appearance,  of  the  same  sub 
stantial  thing.  It  is  not  a  thing  denned,  nor  can  it  be  held  within 
the  fixed  limits  of  either  description  or  apprehension.  It  is  a  thing 
of  progress,  of  degrees,  and,  therefore,  a  complex  of  phenomena. 
We  all  know  what  we  mean  by  it  in  special  applications,  but  these 
are  so  numerous,  and  so  various,  that  our  conceptions  or  notions  of  it 

247 


248  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

do  not  serve  in  scientific  classification.  Treated  or  taken  as  a  particular 
form  of  societary  organization,  the  idea  of  some  constancy  and 
fixity  of  character  intrudes,  which  is  an  error  of  essence,  for  its 
essence  is  changeful  progressiveness ;  and  its  changes  are  so  great 
in  degree,  that  they  take  on  real  changes  in  kind.  If  the  Jews, 
Greeks,  and  Romans,  were  all  civilized  peoples  at  the  commence 
ment  of  the  Christian  era,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  Chinese  now; 
and  what  of  Western  Europe  any  time  in  the  last  five  centuries ; 
and,  especially,  in  the  year  1870  ?  If  the  Moors  were  barbaric 
when  they  held  the  dominion  of  Southern  Spain,  how  were  the 
Greeks  civilized  under  Alexander  the  Great?  One  descriptive 
name  for  all  these  is  not  more  exact  or  discriminative  than  calling 
the  North  American  Indians  and  the  Negroes  of  Central  Africa,  both 
alike,  savages.  We  have  not,  because  we  cannot  have,  logical 
definitions  of  these  phases  of  human  society.  The  races  and 
nationalities  are  not  in  any  of  their  conditions,  differenced  as  insects, 
fishes,  birds,  and  beasts  are  in  zoological  characters.  Yet  there  are 
differences  between  their  various  states;  and  that  which  we  call  civili- 
.za'tion,  is  not  only  unlike  the  others,  but  it  actually  shows  as  great 
and  striking  unlikeness  to  itself  in  its  epochal  transitions. 

Apprehending  that  we  are  now,  and  have  been,  for  about  a 
century,  in  a  distinctly  marked  period  of  civilized  progress,  we  want 
a  name,  which,  though  it  must  necessarily  be  vague,  may  yet  be 
•serviceable,  because  required  to  mark  a  change  and  a  difference  as 
great  as  any  that  have  put  men  upon  the  use  of  the  generally 
accepted  terms  for  all  the  other  marked  unlikenesses  in  human 
societies.  It  was  for  the  purpose  of  emphasizing  with  its  due  force 
this  era  in  the  progress  of  civilization  that  we  postponed  its  further 
description  by  its  characteristics  at  the  close  of  our  third  chapter, 
until  we  should  have  first  examined  such  of  its  features  as  seem 
now  to  be  leading  the  more  advanced  nations  to  an  order  of  their 
economic  affairs  that  will  some  day  be  looked  upon  as  another  era 
in  the  ever  progressive  development  of  the  race.  Certain  of  its 
societies  or  families  have  now,  as  we  think,  fairly  entered  upon  a- 
new  stage  of  progress,  which  demands,  for  distinctness  of  theoretic 
treatment,  a  new  descriptive  name.  For  this  purpose  we  borrow 
and  adopt  the  term  Guarantyism,  without  intending  to  insist  upon 
it  as  definitely  descriptive  of  a  change  realized  and  completed,  but 
•as  applicable  to  a  border,  or  mixed,  condition  and  drift,  not  well 


GUARANTYISM.  249 

defined,  yet  apparent;  marked,  but  not  clearly  distinguished; 
recognizable,  but  not  clearly  separated  from  the  stage  in  which  it  is 
arising  for  a  new  departure ;  as  so  many  other  changes  have  begun 
in  unnoticed  movements,  and  afterwards  revolutionized,  by  slowly 
reforming,  human  institutions;  as  waves  that  are  clearly  distinct  at 
their  crests,  but  less  and  less  in  their  slope  toward  the  trough  where 
they  are  inseparable  and  indistinguishable. 

To  get  this  apprehension  clearly  let  us  look  at  the  aspects  of 
civilization  before  the  changes  began  which  characterize  the  evolu 
tion  that  we  are  about  to  consider  : 

.  In  the  patriarchal  system  the  family  rule  was  protracted  beyond 
the  proper  maturity  of  its  subjects ;  repressing  their  growth  and 
abridging  the  liberties  necessary  to  such  growth.  Barbarism  loosened 
what  was  left  of  the  ties  proper  to  the  family  in  the  patriarchal 
order,  and  allowed  a  little  more  of  liberty  and  responsibility ;  or, 
in  terms  which  we  prefer  for  their  directer  allusion  to  the  things 
necessary  to  progress,  a  little  more  of  individuality  with  its  inci 
dent  capability  of  freer  association.  It,  too,  was  slavery,  but  it  was 
political  and  personal  slavery,  in  longer  and  weaker  chains  than 
those  of  the  despotic  power  of  the  head  of  the  tribal  family.  It 
began  to  recognize  the  individual's  right  to  life  and  property,  and 
to  some  modicum  of  right  to  self-service  and  self-government.  It 
abdicated  by  degrees  the  absolutism  of  the  priestly  office,  allowed 
some  system  of  municipal  law,  and  administered  distributive  justice 
by  the  rule  of  custom,  privilege,  and  tradition — the  will  of  the 
ruler  was  bounded  by  the  law  of  the  realm;  and  customs  and  institu 
tions  were  at  least  fixed,  and  the  community  was  organized  and 
established,  with  some  degree  of  stability  of  rights  and  security  of 
interests.  But  individualism  was  still  greatly  repressed.  In  things 
most  material  to  growth  and  development,  the  masses  were  still 
crushed  into  a  crippled  uniformity.  Even  the  miscalled  democracies 
of  Greece  had  this  grievous  and  repressive  character.  Men  were 
banded  and  led,  as  the  buffaloes  of  our  prairies  are,  by  the  strongest 
and  boldest  of  the  herd.  The  track  of  the  leader  limited  the 
adventures  and  the  enterprise  of  the  whole  body.  Great  efficiency 
was  secured  in  the  execution  of  every  common  purpose;  but  national 
independence  was  mistaken  for  civil  freedom,  and,  consent  was  not 
choice.  Individualism,  in  all  that  the  commonwealth  commanded, 
17 


250  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

was  suppressed;  and  only  in  those  movements  of  mind  and  feeling 
which  were  indifferent  to  the  commonwealth  was  liberty  allowed. 

But  men  grew  under  the  barbarism  of  Greece  and  Rome  as  they 
did  under  that  of  Egypt  and  Asia;  and  as  they  grew-still  faster 
and  greater  under  the  feudal  rule  in  Western  Europe ;  where  first 
and  most  was  felt  the  revolt  of  individualism  against  depotisrn,  ever 
strengthened  by  its  cumulative  ameliorations — rising  from  tribal 
bondage,  through  monarchy  more  and  more  limited,  until  rebellion 
and  revolution  became  possible  and  irresistible. 

This  whole  process  in  Europe,  rightly  understood,  was  simply  a 
revolt  against  the  one-man  power  that  overruled  every  other  man's 
distinctive  rights.  The  consummation  aimed  at  through  all  the 
struggles  of  the  last  five  centuries  of  modern  progress,  more  or  less 
clearly  intended,  was  the  right  of  self-government,  by  the  most 
appropriate  and  best  answering  political  machinery.  Along  with 
this  effort  for  securing  civil  liberty  and  for  the  redress  of  inju 
ries  suffered  by  its  denial,  grew  the  doctrine  of  reserved  rights, 
which  no  government — not  even  governments  by  the  people  them 
selves — may  now  in  anywise  invade,  either  for  good  or  bad ;  such  as 
the  rights  of  conscience  in  religious  faith  and  worship — the  right 
to  regulate  one's  own  family — the  right  to  do  anything,  and  to 
leave  anything  undone,  which  does  not  immediately  and  directly 
infringe  upon  the  like  rights  of  others. 

If  we  look  closely  into  this  sentiment  as  it  grew  from  tacit 
obedience  up  to  full-fledged  self-government,  we  will  find  that  it 
rather  took  care  of  rights  than  provided  for  duties.  The  farthest 
that  it  at  last  conceded  to  the  national  authority  was  military 
service  and  necessary  revenue.  All  else  of  public  or  social  duty 
must  be  left  to  individual  free  will.  Of  the  social  charities  none 
must  be  exacted,  except  the  scanty  support  of  the  poor,  which  a 
common  humanity  consented  to  extort  from  the  reluctant  and 
inhuman,  and  this,  not  so  much  as  a  corporate  debt  as  from  the 
greater  convenience  of  organized  almsgiving.  The  common  educa 
tion  of  the  people  by  the  state  was  resisted  on  the  ground  that  it  is 
an  infringement  of  the  voluntary  principle — nay  more,  we  have  in 
vogue  at  this  day  a  philosophical  or  logical  system  of  political 
economy,  popular  all  over  Europe  and  America,  founded  and  built 
upon  the  basis  of  natural  rights,  and  grounded  solely  upon  the  self 
hood  of  individual  freedom.  But  individualism,  severed  from 


GUARANTYISM.  251 

association,  has  run  its  race,  as  it  has  served  its  purpose.  It  has 
dethroned  the  tyrannies  of  all  preceding  systems  of  opinion  and 
government,  and  now,  at  the  end  of  its  absolutism,  is  merging  into 
association  in  the  form  of  Guaranty  ism. 

Thus,  Civilization,  in  the  proposed  distinctive  sense  of  the  term, 
is  best  understood  as  the  assertion  and  vindication  of  the  rights  of 
the  individual,  and  the  reformation  of  church  and  state  politics, 
with  this  intent  and  to  this  end.  Guarantyism  may  be  described 
and  distinguished  as  an  effort  for  the  promotion  of  association, 
reconstructed  and  amended,  upon  the  basis  of  that  large  develop 
ment  of  individualism  acquired  by  its  struggles  against  the  earlier 
forms  of  unityism,  which  held  the  spirit  of  free  association  in 
abeyance. 

We  have  a  parallel  history  in  the  long,  and  at  last  successful, 
struggle  of  materalism  in  science  against  the  earlier  rule  of  its 
antagonist,  spiritualism ;  and  in  the  returning  movement  of  the 
rapidly  growing  sentiment  of  spiritualism,  reformed,  liberalized  and 
regulated,  displacing  the  undue  preponderance  and  consequent 
abuses  which  it  held  during  the  dark  ages  and  still  maintained 
in  great  force  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

We  have  another  correspondence,  in  another  necessarily  associ 
ated  movement,  with  a  similar  revolt  and  a  similar  returning 
tendency  toward  a  rectified  system  of  association  :  political  revolu 
tion  in  the  violence  of  its  struggles  went  into  Anarchy  in  its  War 
with  Despotism  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  in 
England  and  France ;  until  revolution  had  so  far  done  its  work  that 
Order  became  a  necessity,  and  its  establishment  worked  a  reaction 
which  eliminated  the  abuses  of  authority  and  began  the  reestablish- 
ment  of  political  and  civil  authority,  guarded  and  abated  by  so  much 
of  the  popular  liberty  won  in  the  long  contest,  as  the  subjects  were 
capable  of  using  beneficially. 

These  correspondences  in  religious  opinion  and  political  institu 
tions  are  analogous  to  the  renascence  of  the  associative  movement 
of  the  present  epoch,  so  long  held  in  check  by  the  revulsion  of 
individualism  against  the  repressive  unityism  of  the  patriarchal, 
barbaric,  and  earlier  civilized  forms  of  society. 

In  the  military  system,  introduced  by  the  monarchies  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  we  have  another  analogy:  it 
comported  with  the  spirit  of  feudalism,  but  it  was  sternly  resisted 


252  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

afterwards  by  the  growing  spirit  of  liberty  among  our  English  an 
cestors;  and  the  governing  powers  were  forced  to  rely  upon  enlist 
ments  for  the  occasion,  and  volunteer  recruitments  for  domestic  de 
fense — Individualism  asserting  itself,  and  the  associative  impulse 
emerging  to  supply,  while  it  supplants,  the  former  public  policy. 

Treating  civilization  as  a  growth,  and  regarding  its  successive 
phases  as  an  evolution  of  its  own  inherent  forces,  it  might,  perhaps,  be 
expected  that  we  should  give  the  chief  prominence  and  value  to  its 
achievements  in  the  arts  and  sciences  which  have  marked  its  pro 
gress,  and  especially,  those  triumphs  of  mind  over  material  forces 
which  illustrate  the  history  of  the  last  hundred  years.  These, 
indeed,  are  signs,  and  they  are  wonders  as  well;  but  it  may  be  ques 
tioned  whether  in  all  the  varied  forms  of  enterprise,  discovery  and 
achievement,  the  present  century  is  a  much  further  advance  upon 
the  last,  than  the  thirteenth  was  upon  the  twelfth,  or  either  of  the 
intervening  ones  upon  its  immediate  predecessor.  The  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  differ  in  glory  from  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth, 
but  these  compare  as  grandly  with  the  respective  ages  preceding 
them,  and  they  contributed,  besides,  as  nobly  to  that  which  has 
followed,  and  now  overshadows  them. 

Material  progress  is  necessarily  an  enhancement,  at  the  rate  of 
compound  interest,  and  the  last  accumulation  of  every  successive 
period  owes  its  surpassing  attainments  to  the  enlarged  capital 
which  it  inherits.  Neither  in  kind  nor  in  degree,  do  the  latest 
achievements  of  science  and  art  exceed  in  their  rate  of  advancement, 
those  from  which  they  sprang. 

The  magnetic  telegraph,  the  relative  circumstances  considered, 
has  its  rival  in  the  discovery  of  the  mariner's  compass ;  and  the 
printing  press  was  as  great  a  step  in  advance  of  the  earlier  mode  of 
multiplying  copies,  as  steam  power  applied  to  service  in  production, 
travel,  and  transportation,  over  the  machinery  which  it  excels  and 
supercedes.  The  magnitude  of  the  results  in  the  later  period  is 
greatest;  but  so  much  as  this  can  scarcely  be  said  of  the  rate  of 
advancement.  Distinguishing  the  efficiencies  involved  in  societary 
development  into  three  classes — those  which  are  employed  in  the 
mastery  and  amendment  of  material  conditions ;  those  devoted  to 
mental  endeavor  distinctively ;  and  those  which  concern  moral  and 
spiritual  life — it  is-  apparent  that  we,  of  this  age,  have  scarcely 
advanced  intellectual  vigor  more  rapidly  than  the  generation  of  two 


GUARANTYISM.  253 

hundred  years  ago;  that  our  grandest  conquests  in  the  realm  of 
physics  are  but  the  normal  outgrowth  of  the  seed  sown  in  good  soil 
by  our  fathers,  to  whom  the  enhanced  fertility,  as  well  as  the 
greater  product,  is  justly  due;  and,  that  we  must  look  to  what  the 
present  time  has  done,  and  is  doing,  in  the  work  of  social  ameliora 
tion,  for  its  distinguishing  glory. 

Political  regeneration  in  the  service,  and  for  the  sake  of  all 
classes  and  races,  began  its  great  career  in  1776,  and  crowned  itself 
with  its  last  promise  fulfilled  before  the  first  centennial  anniversary  of 
its  birthday.  The  movement  begun  in  the  youngest  of  the  nations, 
with  capacities  ripened  in  the  oldest,  has  kept  the  lead,  indeed,  but 
it  has  been  followed  at  greater  or  less  distance,  but  still  followed, 
by  the  kindred  peoples  of  the  same  common  stock.  Suffrage  and 
representation  in  government  have  grown,  by  sympathy,  in  all  the 
nations  of  which  ours  was  born.  All  the  offshoot  peoples  from  the 
European  stock  are  responsive  to  the  grand  example  of  the  greatest 
republic  of  colonial  origin. 

The  last  hundred  years  has  distinguished  itself  by  the  spread  of 
Christian  knowledge  in  heathen  lands,  and  by  labor  for  the  exten 
sion  of  the  religion  and  morality  of  the  Scriptures,  more  than  any 
of  its  predecessors — the  British,  American,  French,  and  German 
Bible,  Tract,  and  Missionary  Societies  are  of  this  period — all  of 
them  except  the  Moravian,  which  antedates  the  era  of  the  Pro 
testant  enterprises  of  this  kind  by  but  a  few  years. 

The  first  movement  of  organized  effort  in  the  temperance  reform 
was  begun  in  the  United  States  in  1825.  Father  Matthew  began 
his  great  work  in  Ireland  in  1830,  and  numbered  above  two  mil 
lions  of  his  countrymen  among  his  converts  before  he  finished  his 
labors.  . 

It  is  quite  impossible  to  esitinate  the  benefits  conferred  upon  the 
world  by  these  systematic  benevolences,  addressed  to  the  moral  and 
social  amelioration  of  society,  by  the  associative  agencies  of  the 
era  which  are  thus  so  decidedly  characteristic  of  the  present  times. 

In  1786  England  had  one  hundred  and  thirty  shi^s  engaged  in 
the  slave  trade,  and  the  traffic  was  not  abolished  by  statute  there 
until  1807.  In  the  United  States  its  suppression  had  been  pro 
vided  for  by  a  clause  in  the  Federal  Constitution  adopted  in  1789, 
and  negro  slavery  itself  had  been  abolished  by  several  of  the  States 
nine  or  ten  years  before.  As  early  as  1754  the  Quakers  had  for- 


254  QUESTIONS   OP   THE    DAY. 

bidden  it  among  themselves ;  but  it  was  not  more  than  forty  years 
ago  that  voluntary  organizations  were  formed  in  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain  for  the  suppression  of  the  system  of  negro 
slavery,  which,  beginning  in  the  British  colonies  in  1833,  was 
finally  consummated  in  the  United  States  by  authority  of  the  Con 
stitution  in  1865,  and  the  whole  colored  race  was  enfranchised  by 
another  amendment  proclaimed  on  the  30th  March,  1869. 

Charity  schools  date  as  early  as  1687  in  England,  but  common 
schools  opened  for  the  children  of  the  whole  people,  and  maintained 
at  the  public  expense,  and  generally  diffused  throughout  the  princi 
pal  nations  of  Europe  and  the  United  States,  had  their  earliest 
date  quite  within  the  transition  age  which  we  now  are  concerned 
with,  and  their  great  extension  has  happened  within  the  last  fifty 
years. 

As  late  as  1839  after  a  grant  of  £30,000  for  national  education, 
proposed  by  Lord  John  Russell,  had  passed  in  the  Commons  by  a 
majority  of  two  votes  (on  a  vote  of  five  hundred  and  forty-eight 
members),  the  House  of  Lords  went  in  a  body  two  days  after  to 
ask  the  Queen  to  rescind  the  grant. 

The  vast  proportion  to  which  the  common  school  system,  as  a 
state  institution,  has  grown,  scarcely  admits  of  statistical  statement. 
In  all  the  States  of  the  United  States,  north  of  the  boundaries  of 
the  slave  region,  it  has  long  been  in  successful  operation. 

It  appears  from  the  census  of  1860  that  five  million  persons  were 
then  receiving  instruction  in  the  various  educational  institutions  of 
the  country.  This  number  is  equal  to  sixty-six  per  cent  of  all  the 
white  population  between  the  ages  of  seven  and  eighteen,  and  to 
seventy-five  per  cent  between  the  ages  of  eight  and  sixteen.  For 
a  better  apprehension  of  these  numbers,  it  may  be  noticed ,  that  in 
Prussia, — where  education  is  compulsory  upon  all  children  between 
the  ages  of  seven  and  fourteen,  and  where  the  result  was  found  in 
the  fact  that  in  1845  there  were  only  two  young  men  between  the 
ages  of  twenty  and  twenty-two,  in  the  hundred,  who  could  not  read, 
write,  and  cipher, — the  number  of  scholars  at  schools  were  but  one  to 
every  six  and  two-tenths  persons,  while,  at  the  same  time,  of  the 
total  white  population  of  the  United  States  there  were  as  many  as 
one  to  every  four  and  nine-tenths  persons; — the  State  of  Maine, 
exceeding  in  her  proportion  of  scholars  at  school  all  other  States 
in  the  Union,  and  the  United  States  exceeding  all  other  countries 


GUARANTYISM.  255 

whatsoever,  except  Denmark,  which  had  one  to  every  four  and  six- 
tenths  persons. 

In  New  England  only  one  person  over  twenty  years  of  age  in 
every  four  hundred  of  the  native  whites  is  incapable  of  reading  and 
writing,  and  in  the  non-slaveholdiug  States,  taken  together,  but  one 
in  forty  inhabitants,  or  two  and  five-tenths  per  cent ;  and  this  rate 
is  very  materially  increased  by  the  immigration  of  illiterate  persons 
from  Europe,  for  it  is  in  these  States  that  they  nearly  all  settle. 
Besides,  these  embrace  the  new  and  sparse  settlements  of  the  west 
and  northwest,  where  the  institution  of  schools,  and  attendance  at 
them,  is  greatly  embarassed  by  the  natural  impediments  of  pioneer 
life.  This  must  account  for  the  fact  that,  twenty  years. ago,  the 
illiterate  of  Indiana  were  seven  and  one-quarter  per  cent  of  the 
white  inhabitants;  while  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  they  were 
less  than  three  per  cent.  Arkansas  and  Tennessee,  both  affected 
alike  by  the  system  of  slavery  and  sparseness  of  population,  had 
above  ten  per  cent,  and  North  Carolina,  in  the  same  conditions, 
above  thirteen  in  the  hundred  of  her  white  population  who  could 
not  read  and  write  at  the  age  of  twenty. 

As  an  accompaniment,  and  in  some,  good  degree,  an  index  to  the 
work  of  popular  education  as  administered  by  State  authorities, 
the  libraries,  other  than  private,  in  1850,  held  four  and  one-half 
millions  of  volumes,  and  the  number  of  political  and  periodical 
papers,  literary,  scientific,  religious  and  secular,  had  an  annual  cir 
culation  then  of  four  hundred  and  forty-six  millions  of  copies.  Ten 
years  afterwards,  when  the  population  had  increased  but  thirty-five 
per  cent,  the  number  rose  to  nine  hundred  and  twenty-eight  mil 
lions — an  increase  of  one  hundred  and  seventeen  and  one-half  per 
cent;  or,  in  1850,  the  annual  circulation  afforded  an  average  of  a 
fraction  less  than  twenty-two  copies  to  each  white  person  in  the 
Union,  but  in  1860  was  equivalent  to  a  supply  of  thirty-four  and 
one-third  copies  per  person  ;  and,  in  keeping  with  these  signs 
of  an  extending  and  improving  education  of  the  people,  it  may  be 
noted  that  the  value  of  the  books  published  in  the  latter  year 
increased  in  the  decade  from  three  and  four-tenths  millions  to 
eleven  and  eight-tenths  millions  of  dollars,  or  two  hundred  and 
forty-seven  per  cent;  and  that  of  the  job  and  newspaper  printing 
at  the  same  rate. 

In  the  social  virtue  of  almsgiving   the  present  age  is  not  dis- 


256  QUESTIONS    OF    THE   DAY. 

tinguished  from,  at  least  not  above,  the  preceding  centuries  of  Chris 
tianity,  but  we  can .  claim,  for  the  time,  the  better  and  kindlier 
administration,  as  a  characteristic  of  the  passing  centenary — a  bet 
ter  provision  for  the  wants  of  pauperism,  and  an  extended  sphere 
of  the  beneficence  which  it  expresses.  All  such  improvement  as 
the  spirit  of  the  times  has  impressed  upon  the  legal  system  of 
relief,  belongs  to  the  period  which  has  diminished  the  number  of 
capital  offences  from  fifty  or  sixty,  a  hundred  years  ago,  to  three 
or  four  in  the  present  day  in  England,*  and  along  with  this,  has 
abolished  the  torture  of  corporal  punishment  inflicted  in  the  days  of 
the  early  Georges.  The  abolition  of  imprisonment  for  debt,  the 
reformation  of  prison  treatment,  and  the  exemption  of  more  or 
less  of  insolvents'  property  from  attachment,  belong  in  like  man 
ner  to  the  nineteenth  Christian  century. 

In  the  United  States,  in  all  these  charities  and  benevolences,  we 
are  grandly  in  advance  of  the  mother  countries  of  Europe.  Scarcely 
a  State  in  the  Union  punishes  any  offence  with  death  except  murder 
in  the  first  or  highest  degree.  Treason,  Europe's  highest  crime  of 
old  time,  with  us  is  reduced  almost  to  the  rank  of  a  misdemeanor ; 
not  a  single  individual  of  all  the  millions  engaged  in  the  late 
Rebellion  was  capitally,  or  otherwise  punished  as  for  crime  against 
the  sovereignty  of  the  Federal  Union,  whose  criminal  code,  never 
theless,  still  retains  the  punishment  of  death  for  the  crime  of  slave- 
trading  on  the  high  seas ;  and,  we  may  safely  add  that  the  tender 
ness  for  life,  growing  out  of  the  higher  appreciation  of  liberty,  and 
along  with  it,  which  makes  conviction  for  capital  offences  almost 
impossible,  and  has  abolished  the  penalty  of  death  in  one  of  our 
States,  bids  fair,  ere  long,  to  substitute  some  form  of  correction 
combined  with  restraint,  for  the  ultimate  and  remediless  infliction 
of  the  death  penalty. 

Thus  much  in  illustration  of  what  we  have  assumed  to  be  the 
distinguishing  characteristic  of  the  last  hundred  years  of  the  history 
of  civilization,  as  it  is  shown  in  amendment  of  the  political  and  legal 
institutions  of  the  most  advanced  of  the  nations. 

*  Blackstone,  Commentaries,  Book  iv.,  chap.  1,  says:  "It  is  a  melancholy  truth 
that  among  the  variety  of  actions  which  men  are  daily  liable  to  commit,  no  less 
than  a  hundred  and  sixty  have  been  declared  by  act  of  Parliament  to  be  worthy 
of  instant  death."  This  book  was  first  published  in  1770.  His  annotator,  writing 
in  1840,  says  :  "  many  of  these  rigorous  acts  have  lately  been  repealed,  and  milder 
punishments  have  been  substituted." 


GUARANTYISM.  257 

Along  with  these  social  ameliorations,  effected  through  the  forms 
and  forces  of  municipal  law,  we  may  claim  for  the  age  a  vast  exten 
sion  of  the  various  systems  of  insurance — life,  property,  and  maritime 
— with  their  indemnities  against  loss,  and  assurance  under  risk,  which 
associates  the  parties  in  mutual  and  participated  protection  against 
the  consequences  of  unavoidable  injuries,  to  which  the  parties  are 
exposed.  Maritime  assurance  had  a  very  early  origin;  as  early,  it 
is  said,  as  the  first  century  of  the  Christian  era,  and  the  policy  was 
recognized  and  enforced  by  law  in  Italy  as  early  as  the  year  1194. 
In  the  year  1667,  the  first  after  the  great  fire,  insurance  of  houses 
and  goods  began  in  London. 

The  superintendent  of  the  insurance  department  of  the  State  of 
New  York  reports,  on  March  1,  1865,  one  hundred  and  sixty-two 
joint  stock  and  mutual  fire  insurance  companies  in  the  State, 
fourteen  marine,  thirty-one  life,  and  one  casualty  company,  with 
gross  assets  amounting  to  one  hundred  and  fifty-one  millions  of 
dollars,  and  adds  that,  "  several  of  these  companies  now  receive  an 
annual  income  exceeding  the  annual  revenue  of  some  of  our  State 
governments  and  many  European  principalities  and  Kingdoms. 
Some  idea  of  the  rate  of  increase  in  this  business  may  be  formed 
from  a  comparison  instituted  between  them  in  the  years  1860-4. 
The  aggregate  premiums  of  one  hundred  and  fifty-seven  companies — 
of  fire,  marine,  and  life  insurance — chartered  by  the  State,  rose 
from  twenty-four  to  thirty-nine  millions;  the  assets  from  sixty-seven 
to  one  hundred  and  four  millions;  the  fire  risks  in  force,  from 
nine  hundred  and  sixteen,  to  sixteen  hundred  and  fifteen,  millions. 
Here  we  have  an  increase  in  the  values  insured  of  seventy-six  per 
cent  in  a  period  of  only  four  years,  beginning  the  year  before  the 
Rebellion  and  ending  before  its  conclusion,  notwithstanding  the 
large  deduction  of  insurances  of  every  kind,  usually  taken  by  the 
Southern  States,  which  must  have  happened. 

Akin  to  insurance  institutions  is  the  savings  bank  system,  of  which 
the  earliest  instances  fall  within  the  centenary  now  elapsing.  These 
banks  may  be  said,  indeed,  to  have  taken  their  effective  form,  and 
acquired  all  their  importance  within  the  present  century.  The 
earliest  traces  of  them  are  in  Hamburg,  in  1778,  and  in  Berne 
(Switzerland),  in  1787.  Their  general  adoption  in  France,  Prussia, 


258  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

institution  in  England,  was  made  by  Mrs.  Priscilla  Wakefield,  at 
Tottenham,  near  London,  in  1803 ;  and  the  earliest  on  a  large  scale 
at  Edinburgh,  in  1814.  Soon  after  they  were  fairly  started  in 
England  (in  1816),  they  were  brought  under  parliamentary  regula 
tion.  Their  progress  was  very  rapid.  From  1817  to  1828,  inclusive, 
the  commissioners  for  the  reduction  of  the  public  debt  received 
from  the  directors  of  savings  banks  the  sum  of  £13,746.546,  for 
which  government  paid  four  per  cent  interest.  In  1861,  the  aggre 
gate  capital  of  these  banks,  in  the  United  Kingdom,  was  £41, — 
546,475.  In  England  and  Wales,  £36,855,508,  when  the  total 
securities  held  by  the  Bank  of  England  were,  at  the  highest,  a  little 
under  £30,000,000.  Quite  the  half  of  the  depositors  in  England 
usually  have  less  than  £20  apiece  in  these  banks ;  one-third  of  the 
whole  number,  less  than  £50 ;  and,  only  one-sixth  of  the  whole 
number  held  more  than  £50.  These  facts  show  them  to  be  the 
institutions  of  the  provident  poor  people  of  the  realm  ;  and  it  is 
this  feature,  so  conspicuously  prominent,  that  entitles  them  to  a 
place  among  the  associative  movements  of  the  present  times.  Mr. 
McCulloch  describes  them  as  "  banks  established  for  the  receipt  of 
small  sums,  deposited  by  the  poorer  class  of  persons,  and  for  their 
accumulation  at  compound  interest.  Under  the  Act  of  Parliament 
of  1844,  the  interest  payable  to  depositors  is  not  to  exceed  three 
per  cent  per  annum.  No  depositor  can  contribute  more  than  £30, 
exclusive  of  compound  interest,  to  a  savings  bank  in  any  one  year; 
and  the  total  deposits  to  be  received  from  any  individual  are  not  to 
exceed  £150."  He  gives,  for  the  year  1850,  the  number  of  deposi 
tors  in  these  banks,  in  the  United  Kingdom,  at  one  million,  ninety- 
two  thousand,  five  hundred  and  eighty-one;  and  the  average  amount 
to  each  at  £25;  more  than  five-eighths  of  them,  however,  averaging 
only  £6;  and  one-fourth  of  them  at  £31  apiece,  only.  He  says 
well,  that  "  the  principle  and  object  of  the  savings  banks  cannot  be 
too  highly  commended.  Until  they  were  established,  the  poorer 
classes  were  everywhere  without  the  means  of  securely  and  profitably 
investing  those  small  sums  which  they  are  not  unfrequently  in  a 
condition  to  save,  and  were  consequently  led,  from  the  difficulty  of  dis 
posing  of  them,  to  neglect  opportunities  of  making  savings,  and  nothing 
could  be  more  important,  in  view  of  diffusing  habits  of  forethought 
and  economy  amongst  the  laboring  classes,  than  the  establishment  of 
savings  banks,  where  the  smallest  sums  are  placed  in  perfect  safety, 


GUARANTYISM.  259 

are  accumulated  at  compound  interest,  and  are  paid,  with  their 
accumulations,  the  moment  they  are  demanded  by  the  depositors." 

The  first  savings  bank  in  America  was  opened  in  Philadelphia,  in 
1S1G.  The  spread  and  growth  of  these  institutions  in  the  United 
States,  and  their  present  condition,  cannot  be  ascertained  with  such 
completeness  as  would  make  it  worth  while  to  attempt  a  statistical 
statement.  But  in  general  terms  we  are  warranted,  by  the  data  at 
hand,  in  putting  their  whole  number  at  above  five  hundred,  with  an 
aggregate  of  deposits  exceeding  two  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of 
dollars.  Some  notion  of  the  relative  magnitude  of  this  grand  sum, 
thus  accumulated  and  employed  in  the  business  of  the  country, 
while  it  is  at  the  same  time  paying  good  interest  to  the  depositors, 
may  be  had  from  the  corresponding  money  movement  in  the  national 
banking  system  which  embraces  almost  the  entirety  of  the  banks  of 
issue  in  the  country.  The  controller  of  the  national  currency  reports 
their  aggregate  capital  at  four  hundred  and  twenty  millions,  and  the 
aggregate  individual  deposits  at  five  hundred  and  fifty  millions.  Put 
these  sums  together  and  we  find  that  the  savings  banks  of  the  nation 
are  the  depositories  of  an  amount  equal  to  one-fourth  of  all  money 
collected  and  distributed  by  all  the  other  banks  in  operation,  other 
than  those  of  private  bankers. 

In  the  year  18G2  there  were  two  hundred  and  fifteen  savings  banks 
in  the  six  New  England  States;  452,637  depositors,  averaging  $204 
each,  and  aggregating  $94,325,066 ;  in  New  York  and  Pennsylva 
nia  there  were  one  hundred  and  twelve  banks;  360,693  depositors; 
averaging  $206  each  and  aggregating  $77.450,397.  In  1864,  the 
New  England  States  reported  an  increase  of  ten  banks,  79,694 
depositors,  and  an  increase  of  $25,104,347  to  the  aggregate  of  their 
deposits,  averaging  $224  to  each  depositor.  The  State  of  New 
York  had  made  a  still  greater  increase  in  three  years,  rising  from 
310,693  depositors  and  $67.450,397  in  amount,  with  an  average 
of  $214  to  the  credit  of  each  in  1862,  to  456,721  depositors, 
$111,793,425  in  bank,  and  the  average  of  $244  each,  in  1865. 

We  have  not  quoted  the  activity  and  extension  of  insurance  and 
savings  institutions  as  instances  of  the  associative  movement  which 
we  regard  as  characterizing  and  distinguishing  the  hundred  years 
past,  which  we  have  called  the  age  of  guarantyism.  They  are  not 
of  the  essence,  but  they  cannot  be  overlooked,  among  the  evidences 
of  the  times  in  which  the  stage  of  individualism  is  merging  into 


260  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

association,  and  selfhood  is  growing  into  cooperation.  They  are 
incidental  and  collateral,  but  they  are  symptomatic  and  inseparable. 
They  are  the  earliest  strivings  and  the  outward  accompaniments  of 
an  impulse  that  is  translating  the  brotherhood  of  men  into  coopera 
tion  in  industrial  pursuits,  and  copartnership  in  risks  and  profits. 
The  principle  of  legal  corporation  is  the  very  earliest  form  of  the 
perception  of  the  benefit  of  mutuality — the  first  indistinct  realiza 
tion  of  its  serviceableness ;  for  it  is  true  that,  every  societary  move 
ment  in  the  progress  of  the  race  has  a  material,  answering  to  its 
spiritual,  spring,  and  always  its  harbinger.  Harmony  of  interests 
in  business  affairs,  naturally  enough,  precedes  the  harmony  prompted 
by  social  sentiments,  among  the  masses  of  mankind.  Material 
interest  is  as  the  bud  of  brotherhood,  its  material  profit  is  the 
plainest  and  strongest  persuasive,  but  the  social  germ  grows  with 
its  growth  and  ripens  in  its  fruit.  A  legal  corporation  is  the 
simplest  type,  as  well  as  the  earliest  form  of  cooperation.  In  it  we 
have  the  unity  and  identity  of  interests  which  convert  numbers  into 
one  artificial  person,  with  perpetual  succession  and  joint  and 
equitable  participation  of  all  its  beneficial  products,  at  the  expense 
of  its  joint  maintenance  and  a  fair  division  of  its  risks  and  losses. 

Capital,  as  distinct  from  the  labor  of  which  it  is  the  secured  fruit, 
very  early  in  civilization  went  into  association,  and  this  tendency 
measures  the  growth  and  grade  of  societary  progress.  All  the  great 
works  of  modern  times  are  the  results,  and  the  evidences  of  its  force 
in  its  free  movement.  The  pyramids  of  Egypt,  and  the  cities,  roads, 
and  canals  of  the  barbaric  ages  were  produced  by  associated  labor 
in  bondage.  The  greater  works  of  the  latest  times  have  come  from 
capital  associated  in  freedom.  Labor  in  liberty  is  now  learning  the 
force  of  union,  and  beginning  to  provide  the  conditions  for  securing 
its  advantages.  Money  is  the  dried  and  preserved  fruit  of  work — • 
it  will  keep  and  will  bear  the  attrition  of  the  necessary  fellowship 
which  gives  it  multiplied  efficiency.  Labor  is  a  live  thing,  with 
susceptibilities,  and  incapacities,  which  make  the  conditions  of  per 
fect  association  hard  to  secure,  but  which  are  indispensable  to  the 
fusion  of  identity,  and  the  required  harmonies  of  cooperation.  Men 
must  be  better  before  they  can  grow  nearer,  and  a  very  high  grade 
of  excellency  is  necessary  to  general  coalescence.  They  must  coin 
cide  before  they  can  thoroughly  correspond. 

In  the  infancy  of  civilization  men  begin  to  club  their  cash;  a 


GUARANTYISM.  261 

little  later  they  unite  to  divide  risks  upon  realized  property  most 
exposed  to  loss;  a  little  later  still,  they  venture,  in  the  first 
strengthenings  of  faith,  to  joint  management  by  its  necessary 
agents,  in  order  to  provide  for  profits — they  invent  partnerships, 
securing  them  as  well  as  they  can  against  the  treacheries  that  are 
incident  to  trust;  and  a  little  later  still,  the  associative  movement 
recognizes  the  social  charities  which  they  can  serve.  Marine,  fire, 
life,  health  insurance,  legal  corporations,  which  exempt  the  corpo 
rators  from  all  loss  beyond  the  definite  value  in  the  venture,  are  so 
entirely  material  in  their  motives,  that  corporations  have  been  long 
described  as  things  without  souls.  That  they  have  powerful  bodies 
is  the  reason  that  they  get  leave  to  live  and  work  for  their  owners. 
Yet  evil  as  their  reputation  is,  they  have  some  of  the  virtue  of 
principle,  as  well  as  that  of  efficiency,  and  they  are  found  conveni 
ent  forms  for  exerting  more  and  more  of  the  social  force,  as  they  are 
extended  to  other  and  finer  uses.  The  office  of  almsgiving  is  by  all 
improving  societies  devolved  upon  the  corporate  authorities;  and 
benevolence,  which  is  in  its  nature  voluntary,  takes  upon  itself  the 
compulsory  character  of  a  societary  obligation.  A  donation  comes 
to  be  a  tax,  that  the  duty  may  be  equitably  apportioned  and 
thoroughly  performed.  Instead  of  the  pyramids  that  barbarism 
compelled,  arise  the  poor-houses  built  by  consent,  with  a  grain  of 
the  involuntary  built  into  them  out  of  the  constrained  contributions 
of  the  reluctant.  Here  the  material  and  the  spiritual  springs  of 
movement  begin  to  work  together,  somewhat  to  the  damage  and 
deterioration  of  each,  yet  to  eventual  advantage  in  the  compromise; 
and  men  learn  the  ways  and  means  of  "  looking  not  alone  upon  their 
own  things,  but  also  upon  the  things  of  others,"  and,  whether  they 
expect  "  to  receive  a  hundredfold  for  all  they  give  here,  in  the  world 
to  come,"  or  not;  or,  whether  they  are  induced  to  make  so  long  a  loan 
of  goods  and  chattels,  or  not,  they  discover  that  the  charities,  as 
investments  which  make  such  large  returns  to  the  giver,  can  be 
administered  on  business  principles  to  the  very  highest  rate  of 
profit.  By  this  time  they  have  gone  through  and  graduated  in  the 
social  branches  of  insurance,  dividends,  and  profits,  which  begin 
and  end  in  property  interests,  and  are  ready  for  other  movements 
that  pay  risks,  dividends,  and  profits  as  they  go,  and  do  not  end  in  im 
mediate  individual  benefits;  movements  that  secure  self  better  than 
.any  that  refuse  association,  and  whose  expenses  and  losses  are  the 


262  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

lightest  of  all  that  beleaguer  them,  and  are  at  the  same  time  not 
dead  losses  even  when  they  happen,  because  they  are  vital  to  the 
highest  ends,  and  in  the  effects  intended. 

Having  banked  profitably  upon  property  and  credit,  and  even 
made  capital  of  their  mortality  for  the  use  of  their  survivors,  they 
proceed  to  extend  the  investment  of  their  possible  casualties  of 
health  and  fortune,  and.  thus  convert  them  into  a  fund  provided 
for  the  redress  of  their  evils  and  injuries.  After  saving  funds 
come  beneficial  societies,  under  a  hundred  forms  of  organization,  in 
which  provision  for  relief  in  sickness  and  misfortune  are  the 
special  objects  of  associated  contributions. 

Beneficial  societies  having  no  need  for  a  central  government,  and 
not  being  required  to  report  their  statistics  to  the  civil  governments 
in  England  or  America,  their  numbers,  growth  and  work  cannot  be 
estimated.  That  they  are  very  extensive  in  England  and  Ireland, 
where  they  are  known  as  "  friendly  societies,"  is  indicated  by  the 
amount  of  their  aggregate  deposits  standing  to  their  credit  in  the 
year  1850,  which  was  $5,000,000,  averaging  $688  to  each  contri 
butor.  This  sum  is  nearly  six  times  the  average  amount  standing 
to  the  credit  of  each  depositor  in  the  savings  banks  of  England 
at  the  same  time;  which  is  explained  by  the  difference  of  the 
management  of  their  funds  in  the  two  institutions.  In  the  savings 
banks  the  deposit  is  liable  to  be  withdrawn  at  will,  but  in  the 
friendly  societies  the  capital  and  interest  must  be  held  in  reserve 
for  the  relief  of  the  members  as  the  casualties  occur  for  which  it 
is  provided.  The  total  fund  remaining  at  any  time  is  just  the 
surplus  of  the  provision  for  the  purposes  for  which  it  was  raised, 
and  so  large  a  surplus  as  this  shows  the  amplitude  of  the  provision 
raised  from  the  very  trivial  contributions  of  the  members.  They 
are  described  as  "associations,  chiefly  among  the  most  industrious 
of  the  lower  and  middling  classes  of  tradesmen  and  mechanics,  for 
the  purpose  of  affording  each  other  relief  in  sickness,  and  their 
widows  and  children  some  assistance  at  their  death." 

Corresponding  associations  in  the  United  States  are  called  "  bene 
ficial  societies,"  having  the  same  objects  and  controlled  in  the  same 
way.  Not  specially  recognized  here,  as  in  England,  nor  put  under 
direction  by  the  law,  nor  having  any  responsibility,  or  needing  any 
protection,  they  make  no  public  reports,  and  we  have  no  official 
statistics  of  their  number,  funds,  or  work.  They  are,  however, 


GUARANTYISM.  263 

very  numerous,  and  proportionately  useful.  Each  association  deter 
mines  for  itself  the  conditions  of  membership,  the  weekly  or  monthly 
contributions,  the  weekly  allowance  to  the  sick,  the  amount  of 
funeral  expenses  allowed  to  members  and  their  families,  and  the 
cash  and  care  promised  to  widows  and  orphans.  The  allowances  in 
sickness  are  usually  quite  equal  to  the  ordinary  earnings  of  the 
beneficiary,  if  they  are  not  even  greater  than  those  of  the  skilled 
laborer ;  and,  generally,  the  tax  upon  the  members  is  not  larger  per 
year  than  the  relief  granted  for  a  week's  illness;  besides,  the 
funeral  donation  is  always  sufficient  to  cover  its  expense.  At  such 
easy  rates  is  insurance  provided  for  sickness  and  such  casualties  as 
disqualify  the  member§  for  self-support. 

As  a  matter  of  policy,  as  well  as  principle,  these  societies 
guard  the  general  moral  conduct  of  their  members  by  expulsion 
for  crimes  and  misconduct  discreditable  to  the  association ;  and  they 
refuse  relief  for  sickness  and  accidents  plainly  traceable  to  intem 
perance  or  to  practices  contrary  to  public  morals. 

It  is  true  of  them  generally  that  the  societies  grow  rich,  even  to 
the  extent  of  requiring,  in  some  of  the  oldest  and  largest  of  them, 
an  occasional  distribution  of  the  manifest  excess  of  their  common 
funds  among  the  members,  by  whose  contributions  they  have 
accumulated  beyond  the  charitable  requirements  for  which  they 
were  intended. 

The  like  provision  made  by  the  rapidly-multiplying  secret  socie 
ties  of  the  time,  checks  the  growth  of  the  primitive  associations, 
and  they  are,  accordingly,  found  to  prevail  chiefly  among  the 
Roman  Catholics,  to  whom  membership  in  secret  societies  is  for 
bidden  by  their  Church;  and,  among  such  Protestants  as  are 
unwilling  to  encumber  themselves  with  the  additional  require 
ments  and  expenses  of  the  secret  orders. 


-p,_ 

Library. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

GTJARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES. 

GUARANTYISM — SECRET  SOCIETIES  :  Free  Masons. — Growth  of  Secret  Orders. — 
Odd  Fellows — origin,  success — Colored  and  British  Odd  Fellows — Negroes  and 
women  excluded — Rebekah  degree — Statistics — Ratio  of  reliefs  to  revenue- 
Expenses  of  membership — Suspensions  and  expulsions — Geographic  distribu 
tion  of  the  Order — Law  of  climate — Political  possibilities. — Knights  of  Pythiat 
— Rate  of  increase — Statistics — Abundant  resources — Geographic  distribution 
of  the  Order — Revenue  and  reliefs — Charities — Expense  of  membership — Penal 
provisions — German  lodges — Exclusion  of  women  and  negroes. —  Temperance 
Societies — History — Propagandism. — Temperance  Orders. — Sons  of  Temperance 
— Organization — Numbers  and  revenue — Benefits — Death  rate — Expulsions — 
Beneficial  provisions  dropped — Female  members — Causes  of  declension  of  the 
Order. —  Beneficial  Orders — Multiplex  membership — Ample  provision  in  sick 
ness — These  Orders  prevail  just  where  they  are  most  needed — Growing  liberality 
to  women — Prejudice  of  color. —  Colored  Orders. —  Order  of  United  American 
Mechanics — Abundant  resources — Trivial  expense  of  membership — Junior  Order 
— Order  of  foreigners. 

WITH  secret  societies  our  inquiries  are  concerned  only  so  far  as 
they  are  involved  with,  and  indicate  the  associative  movements  of 
the  times,  and,  as  they  provide  for  the  risks  and  casualties  of  life, 
or,  to  the  extent  that  these  societies  make  their  members  partners 
in  common  misfortunes,  and  mutual  insurers  of  each  other's  temporal 
welfare,  with  the  incident  help  that  there  is  in  the  moral  discipline, 
and  careful  surveillance  of  the  membership  exercised  by  the  asso 
ciation.* 

Free  Masonry,  for  several  reasons,  should  be  first  noticed  and 
disposed  of.  It  claims  precedence  by  its  rank  and  antiquity.  It  is, 
however,  exceptional  in  this  inquiry,  being  much  older  than  the  age 
of  guarantyism  proper,  independent  of  the  great  popular  movement 
which  specially  characterizes  the  last  hundred  years  of  societary 
history,  and  comparatively  but  little  more  adjusted  to  the  new,  than 
to  the  olden  time.  Free  Masonry  is;  as  it  must  be,  affected  by  the 

*The  reader,  perhaps,  ought  to  be  apprised  that  the  author  is  not  now,  and 
never  has  been,  a  member  of  any  secret  Order  or  Association. 
264 


GUARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES.  265 

changes  that,  in  the  progress  of  things,  impress  upon  all  institutions 
of  men ;  but  it  has  not  arisen  from  the  exigencies  of  the  present 
phase  of  civilized  society,  is  not  one  of  its  fruits,  nor  a  specially 
good  index  of  its  character.  Its  civil,  social,  and  charitable  work 
may  be,  and  probably  is,  all  that  its  advocates  claim  for  it;  and  it 
may  be  liable  to  all  the  objections  made  against  it,  or  it  mny  be 
wholly  free  from  them.  In  either  case,  neither  its  members,  its 
funds,  nor  the  amount  of  its  reliefs,  are  necessarily  involved  in  that 
order  of  things  which  gives  its  special  character  to  the  new  age, 
however  it  may  conform  or  contribute  to  its  movements. 

But,  within  the  present  century,  there  have  arisen  an  immense 
variety  of  secret  orders  and  associations  that  are  rolling  on  with 
cumulative  force,  and  bid  fairly  now  to  aggregate  the  entire  mass  of 
the  advancing  communities  of  Christendom.  Some  of  them  are 
purely  benevolent  in  their  avowed  objects;  their  paraphernalia, 
degrees  of  honor,  and  other  attractions,  being  only  designed  to 
increase  their  fascinations,  and  promote  their  progress ;  others,  and 
indeed,  in  some  degree,  all,  may  minister  to  ends  less  worthy,  and 
less  important;  and  they  may  be  just  subjects  of  exception,  too,  in 
matters  more  or  less  important  to  their  members  and  to  the  commu 
nity;  for  all  human  institutions  are  liable  to  the  imperfections  and 
abuses  of  human  frailty.  But  we  are  not  now  concerned  with  any 
thing  in  them,  intended,  incidental,  or  possible,  except  their 
tendency  to  promote,  and  their  service  in  displaying,  the  character 
istic  impulses  of  that  advanced,  and  still  advancing,  phase  of 
civilization,  in  which  we  see  repellant  and  discordant  individualism 
giving  way  to  the  emergent  spirit  of  cooperation,  and  effecting  the 
organization  of  benevolence  in  all  the  forms  of  which  the  age  has 
become  capable. 

Among  these  societies,  working  for  and  towards  reunion  and 
limited  guaranty  ism,  ODD  FELLOWSHIP,  by  its  age  and  numbers, 
its  wealth  and  rate  in  growth,  takes  precedence. 

The  Order,  in  America,  was  founded  in  the  year  1819,  by  five 
members.  Its  sentiment — "  The  Fatherhood  of  God  over  all,  and 
the  universal  brotherhood  of  man  ;"  its  motto — "  Friendship,  Love, 
and  Truth."  The  Order  claims  to  have  enrolled  over  half  a  million 
of  votaries  within  its  first  half  century.  Its  lodges  have  spread  into 
every  State  in  the  Union,  some  of  the  islands  of  the  Pacific,  and 
into  the  British  American  Provinces,  and  Australia,  where  it  has 

18 


266  QUESTIONS  or  THE  DAY. 

recently  absorbed  a  somewhat  older  but  much  weaker  order,  origi 
nally  founded  in  Great  Britain;  with  which  the  Colored  Odd 
Fellows  of  the  United  States,  excluded  from  fellowship  by  their 
white  brethren,  under  the  long  prevailing  prejudice  of  color,  are  in 
full  fellowship.  In  common  with  other  associations  of  whites  in  the 
United  States,  whose  general  profession  of  philanthropy,  humanity, 
and  benevolence  in  the  past,  had  a  like  limitation  in  principle  and 
practice,  the  Odd  Fellows  excluded  negroes  and  women  from  its 
membership;  and  the  former  from  all  forms  and  operations  of  its 
charities.  The  prejudice  of  color  is  the  reason,  and  the  whole 
reason,  of  the  severance  of  the  American  from  the  English  brother 
hood;  and  this  difference  had  to  be  overcome  in  Australia  by  its 
surrender  there,  before  a  unity  of  jurisdiction  could  be  effected. 

Very  recently,  by  the  creation  of  what  in  the  Order  is  called  the 
Relckah  Degree,  women  are  admitted  into  a  collateral  branch, 
without  acquiring  all  the  privileges  and  immunities  of  full  member 
ship,  but  are  made  capable  of  its  charitable  offices,  and,  to  some 
extent,  of  its  dignities  and  authorities  within  their  own  degree,  in 
which  they  participate  with  male  members :  the  Rebekah  Degree 
being  constituted  of  both  sexes.  This  sentiment  is  progressive, 
and  evidently  tends  to  the  concession  of  larger  and  larger  partici 
pation  to  the  long-excluded  sex.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  trace 
the  influences  that  are  gradually  widening  the  huuianitary  spirit  of 
the  Order  for  the  admission  of  a  sisterhood  into  the  brotherhood, 
and  it  is,  also,  unnecessary  to  look  for  the  probability  of  the  new 
order  of  things  amongst  us  in  its  necessary  tendency  to  break 
through  the  prejudice  that  has  hitherto  barred  out  the  colored  race 
from  its  universality  of  brotherhood  and  benevolence.  But  we  may 
expect  that  all  changes  in  the  general  sentiment  of  society  will 
reflect  their  effects,  sooner  or  later,  upon  those  whose  assumed  posi 
tion  is  in  the  advance,  and  who  are  specially  pledged  to  advance  the 
"  universal  brotherhood  of  man." 

The  progress  ,of  this  American  Order  is  a  sign  of  the  limes,  and 
so  significant  as  to  give  interest  to  some  of  its  general  details. 
From  the  report  of  the  Grand  Lodge  of  the  United  States,  held  at 
San  Francisco,  in  September,  1869,  we  take  the  materials  of  the 
following  tabular  statement,  exhibiting  the  growth  of  the  member 
ship  and  revenue,  and  of  the  relief  afforded  during  the  three  last 
decades. 


GUARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES.  267 

Proportion  of  reliefs 
Decade.  Revenue.  Reliefs.  Initiates.          to  revenue 

1830-9 $      327,935  no  record.  18,060  

1840-9 4,933,492  $1,864,115  179,754  37.78  per  cent. 

1850-9 12,951,453  6,064,397  234,252  46.82       " 

1860-9...,         ..  13,111,133  4,846,518  228,193  36.96       " 


Totals .$31,324,013       $12,775,030         660,259         41.21       " 

These  totals  need  some  explanation.  The  excess  of  eighteen 
and  a  half  millions  of  revenue  over  expenditures  in  relief  of 
brothers,  their  widows,  and  orphans,  is  due  to  cost  of  conducting 
the  lodges;  such  as  regalia,  rent,  fuel,  light,  salaries,  and  other 
expenses,  with  probably  an  aggregate  fund  of  nine  millions  in  the 
treasuries  of  the  lodges,  available  for  all  uses.  The  initiates  sum 
up  660,259  within  forty  years,  but  the  reported  membership  in 
June,  1869,  was  only '268,608.  The  difference  of  400,000,  nearly, 
must  be  accounted  for  by  deaths,  suspensions,  and  expulsions.  The 
number  of  brothers  relieved  during  the  last  year  and  the  year 
before  does  not  amount  to  quite  nine  per  cent  of  the  total  member 
ship  of  either  year,  and  the  deaths  of  the  year  ending  June,  1869, 
were  but  eight-tenths  of  one  per  cent  of  the  membership  at  the 
beginning  of  the  year.  The  average  reliefs,  in  proportion  to  the 
revenue  of  the  forty  years,  was  forty-one  and  twenty-one  one-hun- 
dredths  per  cent,  but  the  proportion  of  the  last  two  years  was  but 
thirty-two  per  cent.  The  total  revenue  of  the  year  1867-8, 
ending  June  30,  1868,  of  the  lodges  and  encampments,  amounted 
to  82,364,295,  and  of  the  year  1868-9  to  $2,630,316.  The  tax 
per  head  to  the  total  membership  would  thus  appear  to  be  nine 
dollars  per  annum;  but  the  invested  funds  must  have  yielded 
nearly  half  a  million  to  the  revenue,  which,  being  deducted,  would 
reduce  the  average  taxation  per  member  to  about  eight  dollars  per 
annum.  This  is,  indeed,  a  cheap  rate  of  assurance  for  the  health, 
and  provision  for  the  burial  expenses  of  the  members,  with  relief 
of  widows  and  orphans  added.  The  increase  of  the  membership 
has  been  about  ten  per  cent  per  annum  during  the  last  five  years. 
This  is  double  the  rate  of  increase  in  the  membership  of  the 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church  in  Pennsylvania  during  the  same  time. 
The  death  rate  in  the  Odd  Fellow  societies  is  also  apparently  in 
their  favor,  but,  perhaps,  not  really  so.  The  deaths  in  the  Church 
are  as  twelve  to  eight  in  the  Order;  but  the  Order  selects  its  candi- 


268  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

dates,  excluding  the  unhealthy  among  men,  all  women,  and  all  of 
both  sexes  under  twenty-one  years  of  age. 

The  suspensions  of  the  last  two  years  number  25,721,  and  were 
equal  to  thirty-one  per  cent  of  the  initiations;  most  of  these,  how 
ever,  were  for  non-payment  of  dues.  In  the  Grand  Sire's  address, 
delivered  in  1808,  he  says  that  "  in  the  last  twenty  years  there 
have  been  214.990  members  suspended  from  membership,  and, 
with  few  exceptions,  for  non-payment  of  dues."  About  one-third 
of  the  members  suspended  are  usually  reinstated;  so  that  about 
twenty  per  cent  of  the  initiations  are  lost  to  the  Order  from  causes 
which  do  not  involve  any  other  unfitness  or  unworthiness  than 
"  suspension  "  implies. 

The  expulsions  are  annually  something  less  than  one  per  cent  of 
the  total  membership.  Their  names  and  offenses  are  published, 
and  besides  those  that  are  made  "  for  conduct  unbecoming  an  Odd 
Fellow,"  nearly  every  crime  against  society,  and  every  form  of 
moral  depravity  known  among  men,  are  in  the  list  of  offenses. 
Among  these,  drunkenness,  with  its  attendant  crimes,  figures  first 
in  the  number  of  its  subjects.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  far  the 
severest  discipline  of  the  lodges  reaches  in  rebuke  of  private  vices — 
a  great  many  cases  are  given  of  expulsion  for  lying,  slander,  neglect 
and  abuse  of  family,  gambling  and  keeping  gambling  houses,  viola 
tion  of  the  laws  of  the  State  in  restraint  of  liquor  selling,  selling 
liquor  to  drunkards  against  the  remonstrances  of  their  wives,  re 
fusing  aid  to  sick  brothers,  and,  in  .one  case,  diluting  the  liquor 
administered  to  a  sick  brother.  Rioting  and  assault  and  battery 
frequently  occur  in  the  list,  divulging  secrets  of  the  Order  in  a 
few  instances,  and  in  one  case  "general  meanness"  is  the  charge. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  offenses  here  named  are  probably  rather 
flagrant  degrees,  and  publicly  offensive ;  for,  it  cannot  be  assumed 
that  the  members  in  good  standing  are  wholly  free  from  any  and  all 
of  them.  In  the  last  report  of  the  Grand  Lodge  the  expulsions  for 
the  State  of  Pennsylvania  are  given  at  121  ''for  conduct  unbecom 
ing  Odd  Fellows."  Names  and  offenses  not  given ;  but,  for  all  the 
other  States,  the  offenders  and  their  specific  misdemeanors  are  pub 
lished  wilhout  reserve.  The  aggregate  for  the  year  is  summed  up 
at  1,081. 

The  geographic  distribution  of  the  Order  in  the  United  States  is 
something  curious.  The  whole  membership  in  June,  1869,  was 


GUARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES  269 

268,608  j  of  these  Pennsylvania  had  09,770,  or  twenty-five  per  cent, 
while  New  York  with  a  much  larger  population  had  but  17,950 
members,  or  only  six  and  two-thirds  per  cent  of  the  total  member 
ship  in  North  America.  More  curious  still,  climate  or  race  seems 
to  have  its  influence  here  as  in  other  societary  facts  and  move 
ments.  Between  latitude  39°  and  42,°  north,  seventy-one  and  eight- 
tenths  per  cent  of  the  total  membership  is  found }  that  is,  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  Maryland,  Delaware,  Pennsylvania,  New 
Jersey,  West-Virginia,  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Missouri,  Iowa, 
Kansas,  Colorado,  Nevada,  and  California — fifteen  States  and  Terri 
tories,  there  are  192,954  of  the  Order.  The  six  New  England 
States,  New  York,  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  Oregon,  Ne 
braska,  Montana,  and  the  British  provinces — all  lying  above  lati 
tude  42°  north,  had  but  54.111  members,  or  twenty  and  one-tenth 
per  cent  of  the  total ;  and  all  south  of  38° — fourteen  States  and 
Territories — had  21.536,  or  a  fraction  over  eight  per  cent. 

The  Rebellion,  of  course,  had  some  effect  upon  the  membership  in 
the  southern  belt  of  States,  from  which  they  have  not  yet  recovered, 
but  the  law  of  climate  and  its  effects  upon  the  inhabitants,  rules 
here,  forcibly  and  conspicuously.  Else,  how  shall  we  account  for 
the  phenomena  in  the  northern  belt,  in  which  a  population  of  nine 
millions  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Union,  in  1860,  with  three  millions 
and  a  half  in  the  British  provinces,  to  be  added,  should  show  but 
twenty  per  cent  of  the  total  membership;  while  the  middle  belt  with  no 
more  than  twelve  millions  of  people  (12,359,870  free  people  in  1860) 
has  seventy-two  per  cent.  Or,  if  a  comparison  of  communities  in 
the  nearest  equality  of  conditions,  and  located  most  nearly  to  each 
other  be  chosen,  we  have  this  result :  in  1868  the  six  New  England 
States  and  the  State  of  New  York  cast  1,402.612  votes  at  the 
Presidential  election,  and  together,  in  1869,  had  37.137  Odd 
Fellows,  which  are  equal  to  two  and  two-thirds  per  cent  of  their 
voters.  Pennsylvania  cast  655,662  votes  at  the  same  election,  and 
had,  in  1869,  69.770  Odd  Fellows,  or  eleven  and  one-half  per  cent 
of  her  voters.  The  proportion  of  Odd  Fellows  to  the  Presidential 
votes,  in  1868,  of  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  and  Ohio  was  eight 
per  cent,  or  a  little  more  than  three  to  one  against  New  England 
and  New  York. 

As  we  shall  have  other  occasions  for  noticing  sectionality  or 
locality  in  other  instances  of  social  cooperation,  we  will  just  now 


270  QUESTIONS    OP   THE    DAY. 

note  the  fact  that  the  New  England  States,  with  a  population  of 
3,135,283  in  1860,  had  together  19,187  Odd  Fellows  in  1869,  and 
Pennsylvania  numbering  2,906,115  in  1860,  had  in  1869,69,770 
Odd  Fellows. 

Here  we  have  a  society  which  has  been  growing  in  membership 
for  several  years  at  the  rate  of  ten  per  cent  per  annum,  with  its 
revenues  increasing  at  the  rate  of  above  eleven  per  cent,  and  a  sur 
plus,  over  and  above  its  real  estate,  of  about  nine  millions  of  dollars, 
while  increasing  its  charities  at  the  rate  of  eight  and  one-half  per 
cent  per  annum.  Power  doubling  about  once  in  seven  years,  if  it 
shall  have  the  gift  and  grace  of  continuance.  It  embraces  indeed 
less  than  four  per  cent  of  the  total  voting  population  of  the  Union, 
but  it  measures  from  eight  to  eleven  per  cent  of  the  voters  of  the 
Middle  States,  and  is  therefore  of  great  political  importance;  or,  it 
is  at  least  capable  of  great  political  influence  if  it  could  be  so  em 
ployed.  But,  I  apprehend  that  its  future  will  not  answer  to  its 
present  attainment,  and  its  progress  in  the  immediate  past.  Other 
associations,  availing  themselves  of  its  special  advantages  and  at 
tractions,  and  relieving  themselves  of  whatever  is  less  favorably 
addressed  to  the  public  demand,  will  more  and  more  abate  its  rate 
of  progress;  or  so  amend  the  institution  itself,  as  to  answer  the 
same  purpose — they  will  better,  or  they  will  supplant  it. 

We  have  another  Order,  generally  like  that  of  Odd  Fellowship, 
which  is  making  very  rapid  progress ;  it  may  be  in  virtue  of  a  better 
adjustment  to  a  different  class  of  the  community.  It  is  not  yet 
seven  years  old,  and,  lacking  the  complete  sectional  organization  of 
time  and  experience,  its  statistics  are  not  attainable  with  satisfactory 
precision. 

The  order  of  the  KNIGHTS  OF  PYTHIAS  was  founded  on  the  19th 
of  February,  1864.  In  April,  1870,  it  had  about  seventy-five  thou 
sand  members  in  the  United  States.  At  the  annual  session  of  the 
Supreme  Lodge,  held  at  Richmond,  Virginia,  in  March,  1869,  the 
subordinate  lodges  were — thirteen  in  the  District  of  Columbia ;  one 
hundred  and  forty-six  in  Pennsylvania;  twenty  in  New  Jersey; 
thirty-two  in  Maryland ;  ten  in  Delaware ;  eight  in  New  York ; 
seven  in  Virginia;  five  in  Connecticut;  two  in  Louisiana;  two  in 
Nebraska;  two  in  California;  one  in  West  Virginia;  and  one  in 
Ohio.  The  rate  of  growth  is  indicated  by  an  increase  of  fifteen 
lodges  in  Maryland  in  the  next  ensuing  nine  months,  and  of  eighty- 


GUARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES.  271 

eight  in  Pennsylvania  in  the  same  time.  The  number  of  members 
in  Pennsylvania,  on  the  31st  of  December,  1869,  was  thirty-six 
thousand  and  ninety-three,  or  one-half  of  the  Order  in  the  United 
States.  The  revenue  of  the  Pennsylvania  Lodges  during  the  year 
was  $277,627;  the  reliefs  paid.  $(30,734 — a  trifle  less  than  twenty- 
two  per  cent  of  the  total  receipts,  thus  falling  below  the  proportion 
of  the  reliefs  of  the  Odd  Fellow  Order  to  their  total  revenue,  about 
eleven  per  cent.  But  this  may  very  well  be  accounted  for  by  the 
recency  of  the  organization  of  the  Knights,  and  their  probable  less 
liberal  allowance  to  sick  members;  and  the  proportionally  less 
number  of  widows  and  orphans  requiring  support.  The  funds  on 
hand  and  invested  by  the  Order  in  Pennsylvania,  at  the  last-men 
tioned  date,  were  $183,664;  so  that  they  may  be  regarded  as  amply 
provided  for  the  contingencies  which  call  for  their  charities. 

The  locality  of  these  beginnings  of  the  Order  are  found,  like 
those  of  the  Odd  Fellows  after  fifty  years  of  progress,  nearly  con 
fined  to  the  middle  belt  of  States,  or,  climatically  stated,  between 
the  38°  and  42°  of  north  latitude. 

The  qualifications  required  in  candidates  for  initiation  are:  they 
must  be  white  males,  over  twenty-one  and  under  fifty  years  of  age, 
of  good  moral  character,  with  all  their  parts,  healthy,  sound,  and 
free  from  any  mental  or  bodily  infirmity,  able  and  competent  to  earn 
the  means  necessary  for  the  support  of  themselves  and  families,  and 
a  belief  in  the  Supreme  Creator  and  Preserver  of  the  Universe. 
The  initiation  fee,  not  less  than  $5.00;  weekly  dues  not  less  than 
ten  cents  per  week,  with  an  assessment  for  the  funeral  fund;  the 
amounts  of  each,  subject  to  the  decision  of  the  several  subordinate 
lodges,  at  any  rates  above  these  minimums  prescribed  by  the  Grand 
Lodge  of  the  State.  A  probationary  period  previous  to  vesting  the 
right  to  claim  benefits,  is  imposed,  and  benefits  are  refused  to 
members  disabled  by  infirmities  previous  to  admission,  and  for  any 
disability  originating  from  intemperance,  and  vicious  or  immoral 
conduct.  The  minimum  fixed  for  funeral  expenses  of  members  is 
$30.  The  support  of  widows  and  orphans  is  obligatory  upon  the 
subordinate  lodges,  but  the  amount  of  appropriation  is  left,  as  it 
must  be,  to  the  discretion  of  the  particular  lodge  to  which  the  de 
ceased  member,  through  whom  they  claim,  belonged.  The  average 
cost  of  all  the  benefits  provided  and  secured  to  the  members  seems, 
from  the  data  afforded  by  the  statistics  of  the  Order  in  Pennsyjva- 


272  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

ma,  to  fall  under  the  sum  of  eight  dollars  per  annum,  exclusive  of 
the  initiation  fee,  which  is  paid  but  once,  with  a  trifling  addition 
for  two  or  three  degrees  afterwards  conferred.  The  whole  of  these 
degree  expenses  being  less  than  ten  dollars.  Suspension  is  inflicted 
for  failure  to  pay  dues,  and  for  minor  offenses  against  the  rules  and 
requirements  of  the  Order.  Fine,  suspension,  or  expulsion,  is  the 
penalty  for  offenses  against  the  corporate  laws,  for  frauds,  drunkenness, 
and  immoral  or  criminal  conduct  of  any  kind,  but  the  Order  is  more 
chary  of  its  penal  records  than  the  Odd  Fellows.  They  make  no  re 
port  of  their  expulsions,  either  of  the  number,  names  of  offenders, 
or  of  their  misdemeanors.  In  the  report  of  the  Grand  Lodge  of 
Pennsylvania  for  the  term  ending  June  30,  18G9,  the  initiations 
reported  are  6,779;  the  suspensions  1,507;  and  the  deaths  96;  to 
gether,  1,603. 

Nearly  twenty  of  these  lodges  use  the  German  language  in  their 
(t  work  "  or  in  the  conduct  of  their  lodge  business.  Almost  all  of 
these  are  situated  in  Philadelphia,  and  are,  probably,  natives  of 
Germany. 

The  actual  condition  and  the  prospects  of  this  Order  cannot  be 
confidently  inferred  from  the  statistics  given  to  the  public ;  but  if 
not  among  the  forces  they  are  certainly  one  of  the  signs  of  the 
times.  They  utterly  exclude  women  and  colored  men  from  their 
association,  and  they  are  ,remarkable  among  their  chss  of  associa 
tions  for  embracing  immigrant  residents,  who  yet  use  a  foreign 
language  in  their  proceedings.  Their  rules  do  not  require  citizen 
ship. 

The  Temperance  Reform  had  its  beginnings  in  the  United  States — 
it  has  had  several  revivals  and  beginnings  in  various  organized 
forms.  Its  history  may  be  thus  briefly  stated:  New  York  organized 
the  first  temperance  society  in  1808.  The  first  in  Great  Britain 
was  started  in  1829.  In  1831  the  first  Congressional  society  was 
formed  in  Washington  City.  Before  this  date  a  great  number  of 
local  societies  were  formed  throughout  the  country.  A  very  gen 
eral  movement  in  all  our  communities  prevailed  about  the  year 
1830,  and  all  the  auxiliaries  of  propagandism  were  vigorously  em 
ployed  with  apparently  great  success.  In  1840-1-2  the  Reformed 
Drunkards',  originating  in  Baltimore,  awakened  a  general  revival ; 
signers  to  the  total  abstinence  pledge  were  added  until  of  both  sexes 
all  ages  they  numbered  millions.  The  multitudes,  however, 


OUARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES.  -273 

had  no  common  bond  of  union,  except  that  of  their  voluntary  obli 
gation  to  practice  abstinence  from  the  use  of  all  inebriating  drinks, 
and  the  com  in  on  effort  of  the  discipleship  to  propagate  reform  by 
oral  and  printed  appeals,  and  with  very  great  unanimity,  an  endeavor 
to  check,  or  prevent,  the  use  of  intoxicating  liquors,  by  legislation 
in  restraint  or  prevention  of  the  retail  trade  in  intoxicating  drinks. 
Of  weekly  and  monthly  periodicals,  in  newspaper  and  pamphlet 
forms,  there  have  been  as  many  as  thirty-five  or  forty  in  existence 
at  a  time,  and  nearly  all  the  time,  within  the  last  thirty-five  or  forty 
years.  The  tracts  and  handbooks  devoted  to  the  same  service  have, 
perhaps,  not  been  exceeded  in  quantity  by  the  like  publications  of 
any  one  religious  denomination  in  the  country;  and.  out  of  the 
general  movement  has  grown  a  general  advocacy  of  the  cause  in  all 
the  pulpits,  and  a  constant  support  by  the  secular  press.  As  an  ad 
vance  step  in  the  same  direction  there  are  more  than  half  a  dozen, 
perhaps  twice  as  many,  inebriate  asylums  in  the  nation,  established 
for  the  cure  of  the  disease  of  drunkenness,  and  all  of  them  reason 
ably  successful  in  effecting  their  intention. 

Simply  as  a  voluntary  endeavor  by  a  host  of  earnest  men  and 
women,  in  every  rank  of  life,  for  the  promotion  of  a  great,  and 
greatly  needed,  social  reform,  the  general  movement  is  a  grand  indi 
cation  of  the  distinguishing  character  of  the  century  in  helpfulness 
of  associated  benevolence.  About  thirty  years  ago,  the  felt  necessity 
for  a  closer  tie  among  the  subjects  and  agents  of  this  reformatory 
work,  and  a  greater  efficiency,  and  better  direction,  of  its  agencies, 
put  vast  numbers  upon  the  formation  of  "  Orders"  after  the  type  of 
Masonry  and  Odd  Fellowship,  in  the  hope  of  strengthening  the 
bonds  and  securing,  as  well  as  extending,  the  success  of  the  cause. 

The  Order  styled  the  SONS  OF  TEMPERANCE  was,  I  believe,  a 
little  the  earliest  of  these.  It  was  instituted  in  the  year  1842,  and 
as  early  as  1845  availed  itself  of  degrees,  honors,  paraphernalia, 
secret  signs,  and  whatever  of  such  fascinations  as  c^ould  be  com 
manded  for  propagation  and  permanency.  They  added  to  it  the 
protective  and  remedial  features  of  the  common  type  of  "  Beneficial 
Societies,"  by  which  an  allowance  was  provided  for  sickness  of  the 
members,  for  their  burial  expenses,  and  for  the  charities  required  by 
widows  and  orphans. 

From  their  official  reports  we  gather  these  prominent  points  in 
the  history  of  the  Order :  after  the  model  of  the  United  States 


274  QUESTIONS   OF    THE   DAY. 

Government  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Order — with  organizations  con 
forming — is  divided  into  subordinate,  grand,  and  national  divisions. 
A  grand  division  in  general,  embraces  the  territory  of  a  State.  As 
early  as  1847  they  had  twenty-two  grand  divisions  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada,  and  thirteen  hundred  subordinate  divisions, 
embracing  one  hundred  thousand  members.  In  the  twelve  years 
1848—59  they  initiated  an  average  of  sixty-three  thousand  per 
annum,  and  had  a  revenue  of  about  $428,000;  out  of  which  they 
paid  $118,000  yearly  in  benefits  to  members  and  their  families. 
This  amount  is  twenty-eight  per  cent  of  the  total  receipts;  in  this 
respect  falling  very  little  short  of  the  charities  of  the  Odd  Fellows. 
The  total  receipts  of  all  the  subordinate  divisions  in  these  twelve 
years  amounted  to  $5,084,477,  which  exceeds  the  total  receipts  of 
the  American  Bible  Society,  in  the  same  time,  a  full  million  of 
dollars. 

The  reliefs  paid  by  the  Order,  as  by  other  societies  of  kindred 
character,  were  determined  by  the  members  of  the  particular 
divisions  to  which  they  belonged,  but  may  be  stated,  accurately 
enough,  at  about  as  much  for  a  week's  sickness  as  the  annual  tax 
upon  the  members,  along  with  whatever  might  result  to  the  family 
at  death.  The  average  mortality  in  years  quite  recent  has  been 
one-half  of  one  per  cent  of  the  membership.  The  violations  of  the 
pledge  have  been  a  little  over  ten  per  cent  of  the  total  members  per 
annum,  and  the  members  annually  expelled  were  nearly  twenty-four 
per  cent  of  the  number  admitted. 

The  prosperity  of  the  earlier  half  of  the  Order's  past  lifetime, 
seems  to  have  greatly  declined  in  the  last  twelve  years.  The  receipts 
which  in  the  former  period  were  about  $425,000  per  annum,  have 
fallen  off  to  $182,000.  The  benefits  paid  have  declined  from 
$118,000  to  $17,000;  and  the  membership  does  not  now  exceed 
ninety-seven  thousand.  This  is  all  that  is  left  of  quite  a  million  of 
initiates,  claimed  by  the  Order  since  its  first  establishment.  The 
reduction  of  the  annual  benefits  to  one-tenth  of  their  former  amount, 
with  a  nearly  equal  number  of  members,  is  accounted  for  by  the  fact 
that  the  beneficial  provision  has  been  dropped  from  the  constitutions 
of  perhaps  nine-tenths  of  the  subordinate  divisions;  and  the  actual 
diminution  of  their  numbers,  is  accounted  for,  by  themselves,  by  a 
great  absorption  of  the  material  of  recruitment  by  other  societies 
and  Orders  that  have  arisen  in  the  mean  time.  In  the  beginning  of 


GUARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES.  275- 

the  year  1870,  their  activity  was  somewhat  revived,  and  they  seem 
to  be  partaking  of  the  general  progress  which  the  principle  of  total 
abstinence  is  again  experiencing  iu  the  country. 

As  an  organization  it  has,  in  a  great  measure,  lost  the  associate 
principle  of  health  insurance,  and  has  fallen  that  far  out  of  harmony 
with  the  spirit  of  the  times.  The  Order  is,  indeed,  little  else  than 
a  temperance  society,  held  together  by  the  attractions  of  their 
ceremonial.  Women  have,  within  the  last  four  or  five  years,  been 
admitted  to  equal  privileges  in  the  Order.  In  18G8  they  reported 
nearly  ten  thousand  ladies  admitted,  and  forty  thousand  lady  visitors 
to  their  social  assemblies.  The  Grand  Secretary  speaks  of  the  ini 
tiation  of  women  as  not  only  a  feasible  project,  but  of  great  ad 
vantage  to  the  Order.  This  feature  of  their  policy  had  a  sort  of 
beginning  fifteen  years  ago ;  but  has  become  an  integral  part  of  the 
movement  only  within  two  or  three  of  the  last  years. 

In  1859,  when  the  Order  was  at  the  height  of  its  success,  its  offi 
cials  believed  they  had  put  themselves  at  the  head  of  the  temperance 
movement,  and  expected  a  future  of  stability  and  progress  corre 
sponding  to  that  which  they  had  enjoyed  in  the  past. 

I  know  not  what  were  all  the  causes  which  have  disappointed 
this  confidence,  but  I  think  that  a  misapprehension  of  the  force  of 
the  cooperative  impulse,  at  work  in  the  mass  of  society,  is  a  suffi 
cient  explanation,  without  any  other.  There  may,  there  must,  have 
been  many  untoward  influences  besides ;  but  without  provision  for 
this  demand,  no  excellence  of  aim  or  of  organization  would  have 
availed;  and  with  it,  all  other  imperfections  would  have  been 
greatly  lessened  in  effect,  and  amended  in  fact.  The  mutual  insur 
ance  principle,  in  decided  force,  would  have  taken  care  of  all  the 
concomitants  of  the  associations.  Mere  Temperance  Societies  have 
again  and  again  failed  to  perpetuate  themselves.  They  have  not 
the  religious  bond  of  unity,  and,  without  the  ties  of  material 
interest,  they  die  out  as  organizations  as  soon  as  the  revival  fervor 
abates.  Besides,  the  "  sons  "  were  too  slow  in  securing  the  correct 
ive  and  inspiring  aid  of  the  "  daughters  "  of  temperance. 

The  jurisdiction  of  the  National  Division  embraces  the  British 
American  Provinces.  A  National  Division  was  established  in  1868 
in  Australia;  and  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  has  one 
of  its  own. 

This  society  has  a  propagation  fund,  and  keeps  a  lecturer  in  the 


276  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

field.  It  has  its  own  newspaper  organs,  also,  and  seems  determined 
to  work  its  machinery  vigorously;  but  it  needs  reconstruction,  or, 
what  will  answer  just  as  well,  the  absorption  of  its  active  elements 
in  other  Orders  which  have  grown  out  of  it.  and,  for  that  reason. 


The  societies,  based  upon  the  Temperance  pledge,  or  embracing 
it  as  a  condition  and  a  duty  of  membership,  are  so  numerous  that 
their  statistics  are  not  attainable  with  tolerable  precision.  Nearly 
all  of  them  which  are  offshoots  of  the  Order  of  the  "  sons  "  have 
the  beneficial  provision  in  their  constitutions.  The  names  of  a  few 
of  these  several  "Orders"  which,  I  believe,  are  the  most  numerous 
in  membership  and  prosperous  in  their  achievements  and  prospects, 
will  give  a  hint  of  their  spread  and  prevalence.  There  are  of  this 
class  such  as :  The  Temple  of  Honor ;  The  Temple  of  Honor  and 
Temperance;  Good  Templars;  Ancient  Order  of  Good  Fellows,  and 
Good  Samaritans. 

There  are,  besides  these,  many  other  "  Orders  "  whose  principal 
aim  is  provision  for  ill  health,  and  burial  benefits. '  A  few  of  their 
names  will  serve  to  indicate  the  prevailing  spirit  of  association  : 
The  Social  Friends;  Sons  and  Daughters  of  Arcanum  Ark;  Inde 
pendent  Daughters  of  the  Union ;  Anglo-American  Beneficial  So 
ciety  ;  Ancient  Order  of  Female  Druids ;  Mount  Moriah  Temple  of 
the  Masonic  Tie;  Annunciation  Female  "Beneficial  Society,  and  a 
host,  besides,  of  the  like  general  character.*  Of  their  numbers, 

*  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Thomas  M.  Coleman,  of  the  Ledger,  for  the  following 
list  of  Secret  Orders  in  Philadelphia,  whose  existence  is  known  to  him,  and  in  a 
large  majority  of  which  he  is  himself  a  member:  Improved  Order  of  Free  Sons 
of  Israel,  Beneficial — Knights  of  Helcium  Arma — Knights  of  Friendship — 
Knights  of  Honor — Knights  Templar — Ancient  York  Masons — Ancient  Order  of 
Good  Fellows  —Order  of  Heptasophs,  or  Seven  Wise  Men — Sons  and  Daughters 
of  Arcanum  Ark — Sons  and  Daughters  of  America — Order  of  Masonic  Ladies — 
Daughters  of  Temperance — Daughters  of  Samaria — Independent  Order  of  Good 
Samaritans,  both  sexes  and  colors — Order  of  Progress,  loth  sexes — United  Order 
of  American  Mechanics — American  Protestant  Association — Brotherhood  of  the 
Union — Improved  Order  of  Red  Men — Independent  Order  of  Red  Men. — Sons 
of  Temperance,  both  sexes — Temple  of  Honor  and  Temperance — Cadets  of  Tem 
perance — Independent  Order  of  Cadets  of  Honor  and  Temperance,  both  sexes — 
United  Order  of  Sacred  Temple  of  Liberty,  both  sexes — Knights  of  Pythias — In 
dependent  Order  of  Odd  Fellows — Encampment  of  Independent  Order  of  Odd 
Fellows — Order  of  Female  Druids — Association  of  Independent  Order  of  P — , 
female — Temperance  Beneficial  Association — Independent  Order  of  Good  Tern- 


GUARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES.  277 

resources,  and  differences  of  constitutional  provisions  and  adminis 
tration,  it  is  impossible  to  obtain  complete  reports.  Like  the  forty 
or  fifty  religious  sects  of  a  great  city,  they  have  shades  of  differ 
ence  in  doctrine  and  ritual,  with  no  common  centre  of  registration, 
and  the  most  active  in  the  membership  of  either  are  not  able  to 
give  a  census  of  all. 

Some  peculiarities  of  one  of  the  societies  of  very  recent  origin, 
and  unusually  rapid  growth,  deserve  special  notice — the  Order  of 
United  American  Mechanics.  The  constitution  declares  the  pur 
pose  of  the  Order  to  be  protection  against  "  foreign  competition 
and  foreign  combination ;"  to  promote  the  interests,  elevate  the 
character,  and  secure  the  happiness  of  the  working  men  and  me 
chanics  of  this  country.  In  particulars,  the  objects  of  the  Order 
are  declared  to  be — "  1st.  To  assist  each  other  in  obtaining  employ 
ment  }  2d.  To  encourage  each  other  in  business ;  3d.  To  establish  a 
sick  and  funeral  fund;  4th.  To  establish  a  fund  for  the  relief  of 
widows  and  orphans  of  deceased  members ;  5th.  To  aid  members 
who,  through  Providence,  may  have  become  incapacitated  from  fol 
lowing  their  usual  avocation,  by  obtaining  situations  suitable  to 
their  afflictions."  The  members  must  be  natives  of  the  United 
States.  Relief  in  sickness  is  refused  when  it  results  from  intem 
perance,  or  other  immorality.  Suspension  or  expulsion  is  the 
penalty  for  intemperance,  and  for  gambling.  In  1869  the  num 
ber  of  members  in  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  Delaware,  Mary 
land,  and  Ohio,  was  twenty-one  thousand,  of  which  Pennsylvania 
had  eighty-four  and  one-half  per  cent.  The  total  increase  of  the 
year  was  twenty  five  per  cent  upon  the  membership  of  1868;  and 
the  increase  of  1870  was  very  greatly  more  rapid.  With  respect  to 
its  financial  condition,  the  same  facts  hold  that  we  have  observed  in 
all  other  societies  which  provide  for  the  relief  of  sickness  of  the 
members,  funeral  expenses,  and  allowances  to  widows  and  children. 

The  0.  U.  A.  M.  in  1869  were  taxed  in  benevolences  of  this 
kind  with  no  more  than  twenty-eight  per  cent  of  their  receipts  in  the 
year.  The  receipts  of  the  widow  and  orphan  fund  were  above 

plars — Junior  Order  of  United  American  Mechanics — True  Temple  of  Honor — 
The  Mystic  Band  of  Brothers— Patriotic  Order  of  Liberty. 

That  this  list,  made  by  the  most  competent  Reporter  of  the  Secret  Societies  in 
Philadelphia,  does  no/  embrace  the  whole  of  them,  is  certain,  which  shows  how 
numerous  and  various  they  really  are. 


278  QUESTIONS   OF    THE   DAY. 

$6,000 — the  expenditure  less  than  83,000.  The  balance  in  this 
fund  was  then  $23,000.  The  councils  of  Pennsylvania  in  the  year 
paid  out,  total  reliefs,  $33,622,  about  two  dollars,  average,  per  head 
of  the  membership, — the  average  receipts  from  the  members  being 
$7.76  for  the  year.  At  so  slight  an  expense  the  society  is  able, 
and  more  than  able,  to  meet  the  assurances  it  gives.  The  death 
rate  of  the  year  was  only  seven-tenths  of  one  per  cent. 

The  Order  has  a  junior  branch,  temperance  being  a  prominent 
feature  of  their  constitution.  In  1869  they  had  seventy  councils 
in  Pennsylvania.  They  meet  weekly ;  attendance  reported  to  be 
good.  Their  exercises  are  educational  in  the  conduct  of  meetings 
and  of  debates.  The  juniors  must  not  be  under  sixteen  years  of 
age.  The  head  of  the  Order  says  these  junior  societies  are  to  the 
parent  Order  what  Sunday-schools  are  to  the  churches. 

The  Order  excludes  negroes,  foreigners,  and  women  from  mem 
bership.  As  a  counterbalance,  in  part,  there  are  quite  a  number  of 
Mechanic  Councils  in  the  country  to  which  none  but  Germans,  or 
sons  of  Germans,  are  admitted. 

These  secret  societies  differ  from  the  churches  in  this,  that  they 
are  wonderfully  interlocked,  and  generally  hold  to  each  other  the 
most  harmonious  relations.  Many  persons  belong  to  several  of 
them  at  the  same  time,  and  are  entitled  to  reliefs  from  all  that  they 
belong  to.  It  is  not  an  unusual  thing  to  see  obituary  notices  in 
our  cheapest  daily  papers,  in  which  two,  three,  four,  or  even  six  or 
eight  secret  orders  are  notified  of  the  funeral.  These  notices 
always  indicate  very  plainly  that  the  subjects  belong  to  the  class  in 
the  community  which  specially  needs  the  reliefs  which  they  have  so 
providently  secured;  such  persons,  as  for  the  most  part  must, 
under  the  disabilities  of  sickness  and  the  bereavements  of  death, 
fall  into  the  "  supported  class"  if  they  have  not  wisely  put  them 
selves  into  the  provident  class  by  fair  purchase  of  an  insurance 
against  the  casualties  of  life.  One  man  assured  the  writer  that  he 
belonged  to  twenty-three  societies,  and  carried  all  their  passwords 
in  his  memory.  He  must  have  been  paying  seventy-five  to  one  hun 
dred  dollars  a  year  for  the  chance  of  an  equal  allowance  for  every 
week  of  sickness  with  a  funeral  allowance  to  his  family  from  each  of 
the  Orders  of  which  he  was  a  member.  It  is  probable  that,  as  a 
rule,  the  people,  in  very  moderate  circumstances,  who  adopt  this 
kind  of  insurance  provision,  fortify  themselves  with  the  rights  and 


GUARANTYISM — SECRET    SOCIETIES.  279 

claims  of  two  or  three  societies,  so  that  for  a  premium  of  say 
fifteen  dollars  a  year,  paid  in  monthly  installments,  they  are  entitled 
to  draw  three  reliefs,  amounting  to  as  much  per  week,  and  three 
funeral  benefits  to  the  use  of  their  families,  which  may  amount  to 
a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars. 

The  most  significant  feature  of  this  great  movement  among  the 
populace  is,  that  it  prevails  just  in  the  right  regions  and  grades  of 
pecuniary  condition — most  general  just  where  it  is  most  needed. 
For  example,  upon  inquiry,  I  have  had  the  one  answer  from  house 
keepers,  that  in  their  opinion  all  ^he  better  class  of  colored  female 
domestics  of  the  city  belong  to  one,  two,  or  three  beneficial 
societies. 

One  of  the  most  observant  and  best  informed  among  the  leaders 
of  this  popular  movement  expressed  this  drift  of  the  common  people 
of  the  time,  by  saying,  as  a  summary  of  his  own  observations : 
" Orders  are  the  Order  of  the  day."  "Indeed,"  he  remarked,  "if 
you  will  worm  your  way  through  the  popular  promenade  of  a  holiday, 
when  crowds  are  taking  their  exercise  and  airing  you  may  be  as 
sured  that  a  great  majority  of  the  mass  hold  membership  in  relief 
societies." 

A  number  of  the  "  Orders,"  here  spoken  of,  admit  women  to 
full  membership ;  and  this  seems  to  be  the  tendency  of  the  most 
prosperous  among  them.  Many  others  have  established  branch  or 
side  degrees,  to  which  women  are  admitted ;  some  have  gone  no 
further  than  establishing  social  degrees,  which  carry  no  "  benefits" 
with  them,  but  allow  women  to  contribute  to  and  enjoy  the  open 
festivals  and  convivialities  of  the  Order.  A  few  organizations,  with 
very  fair  prospects,  make  women  eligible  to  membership  and  to  the 
offices  of  the  Order,  even  to  that  of  the  chaplaincy.  The  greater  and 
older,  and  as  yet,  more  powerful  of  the  secret  societies,  have  done 
little  for  women,  except  by  their  charities  proper.  But  even  with 
them  the  beginning  of  the  end  is  getting  a  footing,  and  the  assured 
promise  is,  that  on  the  great  common  ground  of  mutual  assurance, 
the  long  rejected  sex  will  promptly  be  admitted  to  an  equality  of 
right,  coextensive  with  its  equality  of  need.  The  prejudice  of  color 
is  another  embarrassment  to  the  practice  of  that  universal  benevo 
lence  which  all  the  "  Orders"  profess.  This  feeling  deprives  the 
people  of  African  descent,  in  the  United  States,  of  the  great  assist 
ance  which  a  broader  liberality  would  afford  them,  but  it  has  the 


280  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

effect  of  driving  them  upon  self-help,  and,  to  their  credit,  it  must  be 
said,  that  among  them  there  are  very  fair  imitations  of  their  white 
exemplars  in  every  sort  of  associative  organizations.  They,  too,  have 
their  u  Orders"  of  the  upper  class,  and  of  all  grades  from  the 
aristocratic  brotherhoods  down  to  the  simplest  and  least  pre 
tentious.  Of  the  humbler  grades  they  are,  in  proportion  to  ways 
and  means,  actually  in  advance  of  the  corresponding  classes  of  white 
people.  They  are  organizing  in  the  ratio  of  their  need,  and  rela 
tively,  this  is  generally  greater,  for  all  reasons,  than  in  the  parallel 
ranks  of  the  dominant  race. 

Of  one  Temperance  Beneficial  Order  we  have  this  report :  The 
Good  Samaritans,  organized  in  the  year  1847,  had  a  year  or  two 
since  twenty-two  thousand  members.  It  claims  to  be  the  first  of  all 
the  Temperance  Orders  to  admit  women  and  colored  people  to  full 
membership.  How  will  these  things  be  in  the  millennial  "  Order  ?" 
That  is,  how  are  they  in  the  Divine  Order  ?  In  the  mean  time,  the 
progressives  must  wait,  and  the  conservatives  may  console  them 
selves  with  the  certainty  that  no  change  will  come  until  society  is 
ready  for  it,  and  then,  it  will  hurt  nobody. 

The  attention  of  the  writer  was  first  drawn  to  the  astonishing 
number  and  activity  of  the  secret  societies  of  the  day,  by  noticing  as 
often  as  two  or  three  times  a  week,  in  one  of  our  morning  papers 
having  a  circulation  of  above  fifty  thousand  copies,  from  ten  to 
twenty  calls  for  their  meetings.  Whoever  will  any  day  examine 
these  notices  of  society  meetings,  and  the  reference  to  society  mem 
bership  in  the  obituary  column  of  the  most  popular  papers,  will  be 
convinced  that  "  Orders  are  the  Order  of  the  day/'  and  will  see 
abundant  reason  for  concluding  such  an  examination  with  the 
conviction  that,  indeed,  the  present  is  the  age  of  guarantyism,  and 
that  the  associative  movement  is  the  distinguishing  feature  of  the 
time. 


CHAPTER    XX. 

COOPERATION — SURVEY   OF    THE    FIELD. 

COOPERATION — Survey  of  the  field:  Three  classes  of  guaranty  associations — those 
which  organi/.e  the  social  charities — those  which  economize  the  expenses  of 
subsistence — those  which  equitably  divide  the  profits  of  production. — Selfhood 
made  social  by  expansion  of  its  aims. — A  nation,  a  loose  political  association. — 
Organix.ation  vitalizes  its  constituents. — Difference  between  money  lending,  at 
interest,  and  profits  of  capital  invested  in  production. — Slavery  and  wages. — 
Labor  at  wages  and  money  at  interest,  both  hirelings. — Interest  of  money. — 
Notions  need  correction. — Stages  in  history  of  business  development. — Cooper 
ative  stores. — Elimination  of  middle-men. — Merchant  service,  uses  and  abuses. 
— Merchants  of  old. — The  merchant  a  "producer." — Monopoly  of  common 
carriers. — Monopoly  of  large  capital. — Domination  of  wealth. — Any  remedy? — 
Political  power  grew  in  the  past  as  wealth  does  now,  and  worked  its  own  cure. 
— Resistance  to  domination  of  wealth,  commenced. — Revolt  of  philanthropy. — 
Historic  parallel. — The  remedy  grows  with  and  outgrows  the  evil. — Current 
products  of  industry  immensely  greater  than  accumulated  capital. — Labor's  de 
pendence  upon  capital  in  modern  production. — Freedom  arises  in  bondage. — 
Education  by  labor,  and  of  the  laborer. — The  baby  giant  not  yet  weaned  or 
named. — Trade  unions  and  strikes  correspond  to  the  insurrections  from  Wat 
Tyler  till  the  French  Revolution. — Laws  of  order  working  in  disorder. — Cooper 
ation,  the  lawful  marriage  of  capital  and  labor. 

HAVING  now  done  what  we  could  in  the  presentment  and  dis 
cussion  of  that  class  of  voluntary  associations  which  make  provision 
for  relief  of  the  casualties  which  affect  health  and  life,  with  the 
necessarily  incident  discipline  exercised  over  the  public  morals  of 
the  membership,  the  drift  of  our  inquiries  leads  us,  next,  to  con 
sider  the  associative  enterprises  which  look  specially  to  the  business 
interests  of  the  people  engaged  in  them.  A  general  classification  of 
the  associations  which  we  include  under  the  term  guarantyism,  may 
help  to  a  clearer  apprehension  of  their  characters  and  differences. 
They  may  be  distinguished  sufficiently  well  as  of  three  kinds;  Isf., 
those  which  organize  the  social  charities;  2d/those  which  secure 
economy  in  the  expenses  of  subsistence ;  3d,  those  which  intend 
an  equitable  division  of  the  profits. of  productive  industry:  all  these 
19  281 


282  QUESTIONS  or  THE  DAY. 

have  a  community  of  risks  and  benefits  as  their  conditions  of 
association.  The  first  class  we  have  treated  in  the  preceding 
chapter.  They  are  all,  in  the  points  with  which  we  are  here  con 
cerned,  characterized  by  their  tendency  to  convert  the  charities  of 
social  life  into  equitable  claims,  held  by  right  of  proportionate 
contributions  by  the  beneficiaries,  and  by  giving  a  new  nature  to 
the  acquisitiveness  of  individualism  ;  changing  it  substantially  into 
benevolence  when  trained  into  the  service  of  corporate  aims  and 
ends. 

"We  have  spoken  of  the  two  springs  of  societary  action,  the 
material  and  the  spiritual.  In  the  class  of  relief  societies,  both  these 
motor  forces  are  active  in  the  results,  no  matter  which  prevails  in 
the  purpose  of  the  agents,  or  which  is  wholly  wanting  in  the  im 
pulse.  In  all  cases  the  pecuniary  benefit  is  secured,  and  may  be 
enjoyed  even  by  the  man  whose  social  affections  are  not  at  all  en 
gaged.  The  providence  which  his  selfhood  prompted  is,  by  the 
corporate  direction  given  to  its  accumulations,  transubstantiated 
into  charity  in  action,  and  a  private  vice  is  thus  transformed  into  a 
social  virtue.  Association,  we  have  seen,  vindicates  its  material 
policy  by  ample  success  in  every  well-managed  organization.  They 
all  grow  rich  relatively  to  their  required  expenditures.  The  in 
vested  property  and  reserved  funds  grow  always  more  rapidly  than 
the  numbers  and  wants  of  the  claimants.  Just  as  the  accumulated 
wealth  of  every  advancing  nation  in  the  world  grows  much  more 
rapidly  than  its  population ;  and  the  latter  for  the  like  reason  as  the 
former :  a  nation  is  a  society  loosely  combined  in  its  methods  of 
accumulation,  but  closely  united  in  the  general  and  ultimate  divi 
dends  of  the  common  industry. 

The  consideration  of  those  two  classes  of  associations  which  have 
the  savings  and  profits  of  business  for  their  respective  objects, 
and  which  intend  and  endeavor  a  change  in  the  economic  order  of 
trade  and  production,  requires  such  a  preliminary  examination  of  the 
existing  order  of  the  business  system  as  may  discover  the  promise  of 
their  coming,  and  the  prophecy  of  their  success,  in  the  signs  of  the 
times,  as  the  shadows  of  the  dawn  herald  the  coming  of  day. 

Money,  the  ripened  fruit,  and  embodiment  of  the  energies  of  in 
dustry,  is  naturally  earliest  in  availing  itself  of  the  productive  force 
of  association.  All  institutions  designed  for  the  investment  of 
savings,  for  safe-keeping  and  accumulation,  are  of  this 'class.  Con- 


I 

COOPERATION — SUBJECTS   AND    FORCES.  283 

spicuous  examples  are  banks  of  deposit,  discount,  and  circulation,  so 
far  as  their  capital  is  held  in  partnership.  All  money-making 
corporations  belong  to  it,  whether  they  be  concerned  with  public 
improvements,  such  as  railroads,  canals,  telegraph  lines,  or  manu 
factories,  worked  by  partners,  who  participate  in  the  expenses, 
losses,  and  profits ;  Savings  banks  are  in  the  same  category,  and  so 
are  all  kinds  of  insurance  companies.  They  are  all  marked  by  one 
common  character — association  of  capital ;  and  they  all  have  the 
force  of  the  material  and  moral  spring  combined  in  their  results. 
It  may  sound  oddly  to  ascribe  anything  of  moral  or  social  to  money- 
making  corporations,  that  are  proverbially  destitute  of  soul — that  in 
law  are  only  artificial  persons — that  cannot  die  or  go  to  judgment, 
in  the  sense  that  natural  persons  do  and  must;  but,  under  that 
government  which  "  from  seeming  evil  still  educes  good,"  and 
makes  the  evil  of  the  world  answer  the  ends  of  a  wise  purpose  that 
must  ultimately  triumph,  and  will  not  be  baffled  for  want  of  either 
wisdom  or  power,  in  the  administration  of  disorder — that  makes 
martyrdom  a  means  of  fresh  vitality,  and  death  and  hell  efficient 
servants  of  life  and  order — why  may  not  money  banks,  as  well  as 
parsimony,  avarice,  and  all  the  forms  of  a  blind  acquisitiveness,  in 
all  other  shapes  and  apparatus  of  their  activity,  by  the  simple  con 
version  of  their  selfishness  of  motive  into  social  operation  in  their 
effects,  be  made  beneficent,  and  so,  moral  and  spiritual,  too,  in  their 
service  ?  Association,  with  the  aim  of  accumulation,  is  the  regen 
erating  instinct  of  capital ;  and  equitable  divisions  of  the  product, 
are  the  good  works  of  these  incorporated  bodies,  into  which  a  spirit 
enters  in  lieu  of  the  lacking  human  soul,  just  as  the  lightning  of 
heaven  informs  and  vitalizes  a  rubbish  of  zinc  and  copper  scraps  in 
orderly  organization.  Organism  springs  to  life,  whatever  be  the 
material  in  the  structure,  provided  only  the  material  be  capable  of 
the  vitalizing  influx.  The  business  brotherhood  of  men,  takes 
form  earliest  in  capital,  for  the  "  dried  fruits"  of  labor  have 
none  of  the  repugnances,  the  incompatibilities,  the  incapacities  of 
the  live  laborer;  to  whom  the  benefits  of  a  corresponding  coopera 
tion  cannot  come  till  he  is  fit,  and  to  whom  it  will  come  in  the  degree 
of  his  fitness.  Labor  in  its  savage,  its  barbarous,  and,  even  in  its 
early  civilized  phases,  either  consumes  all  its  produce,  or  hands 
over  the  surplus  to  organized  capital — dead  to  its  producer,  but 


284  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

with  a  germ  of  growth  in  it  to  the  cultivator,  who  makes  it  yield 
some  thirty,  some  sixty,  some  an  hundredfold. 

Savings  banks  and  similar  institutions, under  other  names;  and  life, 
fire,  and  marine  insurances,  having  either  accumulation  of  profits  to 
the  stockholders,  division  of  profits  among  all  the  contributors  or  in 
sured  persons,  or  only  indemnity  against  losses,  ought  to  be  separa 
ted  in  classification  by  this  rule :  are  the  investors  only  money-lenders 
in  effect,  as  all  those  are  who  make  their  deposits  at  a  stipulated  rate 
of  interest;  or,  are  they  partners  in  the  losses,  expenses  and  profits  ? 
The  distinction  is  a  broad  one.  The  lender  of  savings  parts  with 
the  great  agent  of  production.  The  borrower  has  its  use  and  service 
to  the  utmost  of  its  capacity.  He  is  working  his  credit  as  capital;  he 
puts  credit  into  stock,  and  makes  other  people's  capital  work  for 
him  at  lower  rent,  wages,  or  interest  than  it  earns  for  him.  The 
mere  lender  of  savings  works  for  other  people's  capital,  and  with 
it,  for  them,  at  a  loss  of  some  of  the  profit,  and  a  greater  loss 
of  development  and  power  in  himself.  The  wages  system  is 
certainly  a  grand  advance  upon  the  slave  system,  for  it  is  free  in  its 
spirit,  and  may  be  free  in  action  under  favoring  circumstances.  It 
differs  from  the  state  of  being  property,  sold  and  bought,  by  the 
circumstance  that  wages  means  the  sale  of  whatever  is  salable  of 
the  man  %  himself,  and  the  buyer  is  another  party  with  interests 
that  may  be  either  adverse  or  favorable. 

The  self-employed  man,  like  money  employed  by  the  owner, 
is  never  on  sale,  either  for  wages  or  interest.  Interest  is  the  wages 
of  money  which  is  not  in  the  active  service  of  its  owner.  His 
money  is  a  hireling.  The  laborer,  with  his  little  deposit  in  a 
moneyed  institution,  is  a  hireling  in  person,  and  his  property  is  a 
hireling  in  use,  just  as  he  himself  is. 

Just  here  lies  the  difference  between  a  savings  bank  and  a  build 
ing  and  loan  association :  the  deposits  in  the  latter  work  to  their 
utmost  for  the  depositor,  who  is  both  lender  and  borrower.  In  -the 
former  he  is  only  a  lender,  and  that  necessarily,  at  a  rate  of  interest 
less  by  the  expenses  of  the  institution,  and  the  difference  of  interest 
rate  which  makes  up  the  profits  of  the  institution.  These  profits 
Are  really  very  large — so  large  that  they  actually  do  refund  the 
entire  investment  in  building  associations  in  about  eleven  years,  or 
in  about  the  time  that  money  at  six  per  cent  doubles  itself  at  com 
pound  interest,  with  the  solid  practical  effect  of  making  a  man  the 


COOPERATION — SUBJECTS  AND  FORCES.         285 

owner  of  the  building  he  occupies  after  paying  only  the  equivalent 
of  its  rent  for  about  a  dozen  years. 

The  same  principle  rules  all  business  engagements  in  which  the 
man  is  his  own  employer,  either  jointly  or  severally — either  in 
association  or  with  a  sufficient  capital  of  his  own  to  carry  on  his 
business  and  hire  others  to  do  its  work. 

The  science  of  labor  has  not  been  so  devised  as  to  command  a 
general  understanding  and  acceptance,  but  its  theory  is  clearly 
capable  of  logical  statement. 

Many  of  the  prevalent  opinions  and  partial  judgments  concern 
ing  the  questions  involved  need  correction  for  the  vindication  of 
fundamental  principles. 

In  the  matter  of  interest,  for  instance,  it  is  commonly  felt  to 
eat  like  a  canker  into  the  means  of  the  borrower.  It  is  known  to 
be,  according  to  its  rates,  one  of  the  most  potent  forces  ruling  pro 
duction.  Its  low  rate  in  Europe  against  double  or  treble  its  rate  in 
the  United  States  employed  in  like  productions,  and  which  compete 
in  the  same  markets,  is  enough  of  itself  to  settle  the  fortunes  of 
the  rival  enterprises.  It  is  known,  moreover,  that  money-lenders, 
upon  a  large  capital  of  money  and  credit,  make  larger  accumula 
tions  than  any  other  industry  can  command ;  and  it  may  be  hastily 
inferred  that  money,  by  force  of  its  rent  or  interest,  makes  larger 
gains  than  labor  and  skill  employed  in  the  production  of  commodi 
ties.  There  is  confusion  in  the  conclusions  thus  drawn  from 
premises  individually  true  enough  in  themselves,  but  not  in  their 
relations  and  mixed  results. 

The  lender  of  large  sums  at  short  intervals  has  compound  interest 
upon  them,  and  the  current  yield  is  large  in  amount.  The  lender 
of  very  small  sums  may  have  his  interest  compounded,  indeed,  and, 
like  the  greater  capitalist,  has  all  his  time  on  his  hands  for  making 
other  gains.  But  the  one  has  commanding  means  for  opportune 
operations  in  the  markets  j  the  other  may  sink  all  his  in  a  month's 
sickness.  The  one  reserves  them  for  opportune  employment;  the 
other  lays  them  up  idle  for  the  very  reason  that  they  must  not 
be  used. 

Whoever  has  wealth  enough  to  maintain  him  for  twenty  years 
may  do  nothing  but  receive  his  interest  at  five  per  cent  per  annum, 
and  he  is  provided  for  his  lifetime,  and  at  the  end  of  it  has  his 
capital  intact  and  uncliiniuished.  The  difference  between  a  consid- 


286  QUESTIONS   OF   THE   DAY. 

erable  and  sufficient  surplus,  and  the  small  savings  that  will  not 
more  than  cover  contingencies,  is  world-wide.  To  the  one  it  is 
an  implement,  a  machinery  of  large  production,  substantially  with 
out  risk  ;  to  the  other,  it  is  a  crutch,  to  be  used  only  when  he  breaks 
a  leg ;  or  a  reserve,  to  be  consumed  when  his  daily  bread  fails  with 
his  working  strength. 

In  the  matter  of  the  support  afforded  by  interest,  it  is  true  that 
only  too  much  capital  is  plenty,  and,  that  too  little  puts  the  owner 
upon  looking  for  the  best  way  of  making  his  little  useful  in  active 
service,  rather  than  in  waiting  for  accidental  need. 

The  policy  of  business,  like  other  things,  has  its  growth  and 
successive  stages  of  development.  First,  the  capital  consisting  of 
surplus  gets  organized;  afterwards,  the  social  charities,  beginning 
with  public  almsgiving;  then  to  insurance  of  property  against 
risks;  next,  provision  for  "rainy  days,"  with  a  slowly  growing 
mutual  fund  for  relief  against  sickness  and  the  privations  that 
follow  death — all  these  are  a  sort  of  insurances ;  but  they  all  take, 
in  their  earlier  stage,  the  shapes  that  give  their  profit  over  and 
above  the  provision  required,  to  the  capitalists,  as  distinct  from  the 
contributors ;  they  all  have,  indeed,  the  germinal  power  of  associa 
tion  in  them,  gradually  unfolding;  some  of  them  yielding  their 
proper  fruits  to  the  cultivator ;  some  of  them,  reserving  largely  of 
those  fruits  from  his  grasp,  and  leaving  little  of  the  residuary 
for  the  equitable  owner.  At  a  still  later  stage  the  advance  is  from 
the  blade  of  promise  toward  the  corn,  with  the  assurance  of  the 
full  corn  in  the  ear  to  the  use  of  the  husbandman,  who  having  sown 
his  own  seed  in  his  own  ground,  reaps  the  whole  harvest  that  his 
labor  yields. 

This  brings  us,  in  the  growth  of  guarantyism,  to  cooperative 
stores,  as  that  system  of  provision  for  current  consumption  is  called, 
which  is  not  yet  self-employing,  but  is  so  far  self-helping  that  it  is 
self-supplying,  so  far,  at  least,  as  the  elimination  of  middle-men, 
merchants,  hucksters,  and  mere  exchangers,  can  be  dispensed  with, 
and  with  relief,  in  proportion,  from  their  support,  from  their  frauds 
and  their  gains. 

These  intermediate  exchangers  are  interested  to  tmt  as  great  a 
distance  and  difference  of  place  and  of  price  between  production 
and  consumption  as  they  can.  This  is  their  inherent  vice.  They, 
as  a  distinct  order  of  industrials,  are  necessary  and  serviceable  m 


COOPERATION — SUBJECTS   AND   FORCES.  287 

the  degree  that  they  are  indispensable,  and,  no  further.  In  all 
beyond  this,  they  are  mischievous.  How  they  have  thriven  in  their 
department  of  the  work  that  life  demands  !  Twenty-five  hundred 
years  ago,  the  merchants  of  Tyre  were  described  as  "  Princes,  and 
her  traffickers  as  the  honorable  of  the  earth."  Later,  upon  equally 
sacred  authority,  those  of  a  prophetic  Babylon  are  said  to  be  "  the 
great  men  of  the  earth  •"  and,  again,  the  people  of  that  symbolic  city 
are  doomed  to  destruction,  for  this  reason,  among  others,  that,  "  the 
merchants  of  the  earth  are  waxed  rich  through  the  abundance  of  her 
delicacies."  And  yet  again  they  figure  in  the  threatened  catastrophe  as 
deeply  involved  in  the  ruin  which  their  agency  wrought :  "  The  mer 
chants  which  were  made  rich  by  her,  shall  stand  afar  off,  for  the  fear 
of  her  torment,  weeping  and  wailing,  and  saying,  alas,  alas  !  that  great 
city,  that  was  clothed  in  fine  linen,  and  purple,  and  scarlet,  and 
decked  with  gold,  and  precious  stones,  and  pearls  !  For  in  one  hour 
so  great  riches  is  come  to  naught.  And  every  ship-master,  and  all 
the  company  in  ships,  and  sailors,  and  as  many  as  trade  by  sea, 
stood  afar  off,  and  cried,  when  they  saw  the  smoke  of  her  burning. 'r 
It  seems,  however,  that  these  princes  and  great  men  of  the  earth 
were,  by  professional  instinct,  very  free  traders,  indeed,  for,  besides 
the  stuffs  of  the  artisan,  and  the  products  of  the  agriculturist, 
crowding  the  list  of  their  goods  like  a  ship's  manifest  of  our  own 
day,  they  also  traded  "  in  slaves,  and  the  souls  of  men,"  whatever 
the  last  item  may  mean  that  can  have  any  application  to  the  busi 
ness  of  our  modern  sea-ports,  which,  however,  the  whole  invoice 
seems  to  have  in  its  purview. 

That  the  merchant  is  a  necessary  intermediate — a  producer  in 
fact — and  as  much  so,  in  his  way  as  the  miner,  the  transporter,  or 
any  other  agent  or  invention  that  saves  time  and  overcomes  space, 
is  clear  enough.  By  his  service  the  perfection  of  all  production  is 
made  attainable,  for  by  the  division  of  labor  its  products  are  im 
proved  and  multiplied.  This  makes  the  exchanger  a  necessity  to 
all  the  ends  of  useful  industry;  and,  while  conformed  to  his  func 
tion,  and  restrained  to  his  proper  use  in  the  world's  business,  it  is 
idle  and  unmeaning  to  class  him  as  a  non-producer,  or  in  any  sense 
an  impediment  or  a  parasite.  But  he  is  intermediate  between  the 
producer  and  consumer,  and  by  perversion  of  his  office  he  becomes 
an  obstacle  in  commerce,  and  a  burden  upon  the  parties  which  he 
should  serve.  It  is  to  the  necessity  for  intervention  that  he  owes 


288  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

his  place  in  the  world's  required  exchanges;  and  he  finds  his 
interest  and  his  temptations  of  interest,  in  increasing  the  dis 
tance  and  cost  that  can  be  put  between  the  parties  to  the  com 
merce  which  he  conducts.  Roads,  carriages,  ships,  which  econo 
mize  time  and  abridge  the  inconvenience  of  space,  can  be  used  to 
counteract  their  true  intention.  They  are  instruments  of  associa 
tion  in  themselves,  but  they  are  capable  of  multiplying  the  interme 
diate  agencies  of  commerce,  and  increasing  the  dependency  of  the 
parties  which  they  should  liberate.  The  better  these  instruments 
are  the  more  they  take  the  conditions  of  monopolies.  The  larger 
the  number  of  persons  they  are  made  capable  of  serving,  and  the 
greater  the  commerce  they  can  move,  the  further  they  are  removed 
by.  their  value  from  the  control,  and  by  their  management,  from  the 
best  service  of  the  community.  It  is  essential  to  the  railroad  that  its 
owners  shall  have  the  exclusive  right  of  way.  No  one  but  its  man 
agers  can  put  a  carriage  upon  it.  No  outside  traveler  or  trafficker 
can  compete  with  its  facilities  of  transportation.  It  has  exclusive 
privileges.  Even  the  natural  highways  and  the  common  roads  and 
rivers  may  be  monopolized  by  capitalists,  and  the  servants  of  the 
public,  within  certain  limits,  become  its  masters  in  the  matter  of 
travel  and  transportation.  Competition,  in  most  other  branches  of 
industry,  the  regulator  of  charges,  is  easily  defeated  of  its  power  in 
transportation,  and,  accordingly,  as  we  know,  rivalry  here  always 
fails.  Opposition  omnibuses  on  our  city  streets  cannot  hold  out 
in  their  struggles  half  a  year.  They  are  either  underworked  to  ex 
haustion,  or,  bought  up,  if  that  proves  the  cheaper  way  to  the 
monopolist  lines.  Railroads,  like  city  water-works,  forbid  all  at 
tempts  at  limitation  of  their  prices  by  exclusive  occupation  of  the 
route,  and  of  the  agents  of  transit.  A  gas  company  once  in  posses 
sion  of  the  ground  is  in  position  to  defy  all  resistance.  It  can  and 
does  regulate  its  prices  by  the  balance  of  its  own  interests.  The 
rivers  are  free  in  their  course.  They  are  not  private  property;  but 
their  use  is  easily  monopolized  by  commanding  capital.  Common 
carriers  upon  their  waters  are  run  off  the  track,  as  omnibuses  are 
in  our  streets.  The  heaviest  capital  soon  starves  out  its  competi 
tors  or  buys  them  up ;  and  steamboats  settle  into  lines,  and  have 
the  privilege  without  charters,  by  virtue  of  the  wealth  that  needs  no 
odds  in  the  struggles  of  competition.  Passenger  lines  in  ocean  navi 
gation  fall  within  the  same  influences,  and  are  controlled  in  the 


COOPERATION — SUBJECTS  AND  FORCES.         289 

same  way.  Common  carriers  everywhere  soon  get  sole  possession, 
and  the  occupancy  of  the  world's  highways,  by  land  and  water  alike, 
may  be  treated  practically  as  private  property.  Neither  the  breadth 
of  mountain  or  prairie,  of  river  or  ocean,  with  all  the  room  they 
give,  can  secure  the  free  practicable  use  of  their  capabilities  to  any, 
against  companies  which  have  the  means  of  occupying  and  com 
manding  their  passage  ways.  Tracks  over  land,  and  routes  over 
^seas,  are  free,  indeed,  to  private  carriages  and  to  vessels  of  every 
kind  for  whomsoever  can  bear  the  cost  of  their  own  conveyance 
and  commerce  in  them  ;  but  no  one  can  become  a  common  carrier, 
or  take  any  part  in  that  branch  of  the  mercantile  function,  in  the 
face  of  a  heavier  capital  that  would  monopolize  it. 

Doubtless,  such  monopolies  must  address  the  interest  of  the  com 
munity  in  securing  its  custom,  but  they  need  go  no  further  in 
accommodating  the  public  then  cheapening  their  service  in  the 
smallest  degree  that  will  secure  their  own  ends.  Even  while  carry 
ing  goods  and  passengers  for  nothing,  they  are  only  aiming  at 
the  monopoly  of  the  route,  and  intending  to  replace  the  losses  of 
the  strife  when  they  shall  be  in  condition  to  make  their  own  terms. 
Roads  that  divide  business  often  reduce  fares  and  freights  for  the 
purpose  of  selling  out  on  their  own  terms  to  their  rivals.  Charters 
for  roads  that  threaten  competition  are  obtained  to  be  sold  with  the 
same  view,  and  the  protection  of  competition  is  thus  constantly 
defeated.  In  a  word,  transportation  companies  and  corporations  are 
fast  becoming  the  masters  of  commerce,  under  the  system  of 
modern  improvement  in  its  methods;  just  as  wars  are  decided  by 
the  power  of  wealth  in  providing  their  instruments  and  engines. 
The  dominion  has  passed  from  the  lords  of  blood  to  the  lords  of 
gold,  as  the  aristocracy  is  dominated  by  the  millocracy  of  England. 
Is  there  no  remedy  for  the  inevitable  tendency  of  the  age  in  this 
direction  ?  Was  there  no  remedy  for  the  civil  despotism  that  grew 
step  by  step  with  all  civilized  progress,  a  few  centuries  ago  ?  The 
common  people's  strength  only  enhanced  the  disparity  of  power  in 
their  masters — while  it  was  growing,  but  had  not  yet  grown  to  self- 
assertion  and  self-defense.  Governments  that  did  not  consult  or 
regard  the  public  interests,  nevertheless,  did  depend  upon  the  very 
power  which  they  trained  into  their  service.  The  basis  forces  had 
some  room  left  to  grow;  not  much,  but  still  enough  for  their  own 
enhancement.  Tyranny  was  deluded  into  increased  oppression  by  in- 


290  QUESTIONS    OF    THE   DAT.  I 

creased  aggrandisement  through  the  growing  worth  and  wealth  of 
its  subjects;  but,  at  last  the  embryo  life  burst  into  independence  by 
force  of  just  those  powers  which  had  before  aggravated  its  bondage. 

Is  there  any  parallel  of  promise  in  the  struggle  now  going  on 
between  accumulated  wealth  and  its  sources  and  subjects  ?  Let  us 
see — every  civilized  country  in  the  world  is  now  growing  in  wealth 
twice  or  thrice  faster  than  in  population.  The  distributive  shares 
of  all  peoples  have  greatly  increased  in  the  century  which  we  have 
named  as  the  age  of  guarrantyism.  All  the  means  of  production 
have  been  multiplied  incalculably,  through  the  aid  of  machinery  or 
the  substitution  of  artificial  for  natural  labor.  The  people  of  France 
have  thrice  the  food  that  they  had  a  hundred  years  ago,  the  people 
of  England  have  thirty  times  the  cotton  cloth;  and  capital  in  the 
hands  of  the  wealthy  class  of  both  countries  is  increased  by  tale  of 
coin  and  credit  money  tenfold,  with  an  efficiency  in  production  multi 
plied  ten  times  again,  as  against  the  mass  without  property  other 
than  labor-power  and  skill.  The  power  of  wealth  in  the  world's 
work  now  is  as  a  hundred  against  one  in  the  times  when  the  plough, 
the  loom,  and  the  anvil  were  driven  solely  by  hand-power — a  hun 
dred  to  one  in  an  array  of  antagonism,  and  growing,  as  all  soeietary 
forces  are  growing  now,  with  accelerated  rapidity.  Considered  only 
in  their  past  and  present  potencies,  it  is  not  at  all  to  be  wondered 
that  philanthropy  has  been  for  a  century  or  two  devising  radical 
revolutions  in  the  policy  of  distributing  the  wealth  which  labor  and 
capital  jointly  produce. 

Communism,  St.  Simonism,  Fourierism,  Shakerism,  and  many 
other  forms  of  reorganization,  or  social  reconstruction,  sometimes 
with,  sometimes  without,  the  religious  sentiment  of  brotherhood 
incorporated,  have  arisen  and  gone  into  abortive  endeavor,  from  no 
other  conviction  and  impulse  than  the  demonstration  of  the  ever 
growing  disparity  of  power  between  wealth  and  labor.  These  recon 
structive  efforts  are  exactly  the  counterparts  of  those  other  blind 
struggles  of  the  levelers  of  political  and  civil  power,  which  began 
with  Wat  Tyler  and  ended  in  the  primal  days  of  the  French 
Revolution.  Absolute  democracy  in  civil  and  social  polity,  and 
communism  of  property,  are  cousins-german  in  reform,  and  each  is 
grounded  in  the  correlative  maxims — "  power  is  always  stealing  from 
the  many  to  the  few."  "  Policy  is  ever  making  the  rich  richer  and 
the  poor  poorer." 


COOPERATION — SUBJECTS   AND    FORCES.  291 

Neither  of  these  proverbs  of  the  people  is  true,  nor  ever  was 
true.  The  few,  indeed,  grew,  and  are  yet  growing,  more  powerful ; 
but  the  many  are  growing  more  rapidly,  only  they  have  not  yet  got 
a  commanding  hold  of  the  machinery  of  civil  government.  The 
rich  are  being  made  richer,  vastly  richer.  It  is  no  longer  a  figure 
of  speech  to  call  a  merchant,  in  goods  or  money,  a  millionaire.  We 
have  them  in  hundreds;  men  in  England  and  America,  of  whom  a 
dozen  or  two  could  pay  off  those  vast  national  debts,  which  nobody, 
fifty  years  ago,  believed  the  whole  nation  could  ever  pay.  David 
Hume  said,  in  1776,  that  the  national  debt  of  England,  then  not 
one-third  of  its  present  amount,  was  a  mortgage  on  half  the  wealth 
of  the  whole  nation.  Yet  there  is  wealth  enough  in  London  or 
Liverpool,  or  New  York,  now,  to  redeem  the  national  debts  to  the 
last  dollar,  without  spoiling  a  holiday  in  either.  Yes,  the  wealth  of 
the  wealthy  has  grown  fabulously;  yet  it  is  as  nothing  to  the 
increase  of  the  aggregate  wealth  of  the  millions  of  men  who  are 
now  doing  the  world's  daily  work.  Our  civil  war  cost  us  more  than 
five  thousand  millions ;  it  was  all  actually  contributed  day  by  day 
as  it  was  expended.  If  all  the  assets  of  all  the  banks  of  the 
Union,  in  1800,  had  been  confiscated;  if  their  capital,  real  estate, 
coin,  and  other  resources  over  their  liabilities,  had  been  tumbled 
into  the  Treasury,  the  sum  would  not  have  reached  8900,000,000 ; 
yet  the  two-thirds  of  the  Union  paid  up  six  times  that  amount  in 
four  years,  and  were  richer  than  when  the  first  loan  was  raised.  I 
say,  all  the  expenses  of  the  war  were  actually  paid  during  the 
war ;  for  the  national  bonds,  which  we  call  the  national  debt,  are 
the  receipts  for  it.  In  the  aspect  of  debt,  these  bonds  are  only 
claims  for  distribution  of  the  expenses  borne  unequally  by  indi 
viduals  while  the  unsettled  balances  were  accumulating.  The 
amount  of  the  bonds  held  abroad,  which,  in  18C5,  were  as  nothing 
to  the  total  expenditure,  is  the  only  deduction  to  be  made  in  esti 
mating  the  current  contributions  of  our  own  people.  A  little 
reflection  will  show  how  erroneously  the  wealth  of  the  wealthy  is 
commonly  contrasted  with  the  accumulations  of  the  people.  At 
any  county  fair  now  held,  there  is  more  money's  worth  in  the 
equipments,  the  "turn  outs,"  and  the  apparel  and  jewelry  of  the 
visitors,  than  the  whole  real  and  personal  property  of  that  county 
would  have  been  rated  at  seventy,  or  even  fifty,  years  ago.  There 
is  more  money  spent  by  the  industrial  populace  in  travel,  amuse- 


292  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

ments,  furniture,  and  dress,  than  the  whole  country  was  worth  in 
the  very  recent  time  when  there  was  not  a  daily  paper  published 
outside  of  the  Atlantic  cities.  What  are  the  fortunes  of  the  thou 
sand  millionaires  of  the  nation  to  the  massed  wealth  of  the  millions 
of  the  people ! 

We  are  constantly  forgetting  this,  and  so  we  are  foolishly  fearing 
the  issue ;  and  the  best  men  are  prone  to  turn  to  the  devices  of 
despair  for  the  remedy  of  the  apparently  ever-growing  evil;  not 
perceiving  that  the  corrective  is  growing  potentially  with  still 
greater  rapidity:  just  as  men's  hearts  failed  within  them  in  that 
other  strife  of  the  many  against  the  few,  in  the  age  of  civil  revolu 
tions,  forgetting  that  the  many  were  the  many,  and  that  every 
failure  of  open  resistance  showed  the  growing  strength  of  the 
resistance  which  failed — not  knowing  that  success  is  the  outgrowth 
of  failures  oft  repeated,  and  that  men  blunder  into  success  as  a 
<;hild  toddles  into  pedestrianism,  strengthening  its  limbs  and  steady 
ing  its  steps  by  every  stumble  it  makes,  and  gathering  new  strength 
like  Antasus,  every  time  it  touches  its  mother  earth. 

What  have  we  now  at  work  upon  the  popular  welfare  ?  On  the 
one  side,  productive  industry,  so  welded  to  machinery  that  every 
workman  is  the  hireling  of  capital,  so  that  to  make  a  pin.  which 
will  pay  cost  in  the  market,  you  must  begin  with  an  outlay  of  fifty 
thousand  dollars;  and  no  man  will  buy  a  cotton  shirt  unless  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  were  employed  in  producing  it.  All 
forms  of  industry,  which  the  times  permit,  require  an  aggregate  of 
capital  that  no  workman  of  merely  ordinary  means  can  at  all  com 
mand,  either  in  cash  or  credit.  On  the  other  hand  we  have,  in  the 
possession  of  the  unpropertied  mass,  an  amount  of  skill,  without 
which  the  millionaire's  mill  cannot  turn  a  wheel,  or  run  a  spindle, 
or  head  a  pin.  They  have,  also,  an  education,  acquired  in  service 
at  wages  without  profits,  by  which  capital  has  grasped  the  wonderful 
wealth  which  the  modern  methods  of  production  have  yielded ;  and 
along  with  this  grandest  element  of  all — this  new-made  force  of 
skill — an  education  of  brain  in  literature  and  available  science,  or 
science  applied,  which  we  still  call  skill.  For  want  of  knowing 
what  it  is  in  essence  and  force  we  have  not  yet  invented  a  descriptive 
name,  or  descriptive  names,  for  distinguishing  between  the  art  that 
builds  a  bridge,  runs  a  locomotive  engine,  manages  a  stationary  one, 
constructs  a  railroad,  or  levels  a  canal.  They  are  all  engineers, 


COOPERATION — SUBJECTS  AND  FORCES.         293 

forsooth,  though  they  must  understand  mineralogy,  hydrostatics, 
architecture,  geometry,  mathematics,  mechanics,  and  half-a-dozen 
other  sciences,  for  either  construction,  reparation,  or  superintend 
ence:  very  respectable  portions  of  Michael  Angelo,  Archimedes,  Sir 
Christopher  Wren,  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  Benjamin  Franklin,  and 
Robert  Fulton^  must  be  rolled  into  one  man,  in  various  assortments, 
to  make  what  we  call  an  engineer,  or  foreman  of  a  factory,  or  of  a 
machine  shop;  and  all  such  men,  with  their  multifarious  adaptations 
of  their  great  exemplars,  we  class  together  under  our  meagre 
phrase,  "  skilled  artisans." 

Do  we  apprehend  the  wealth-producing  force  there  is  in  these 
hirelings  of  capital  ?  Do  we  understand  how  much  they  have 
grown  into  their  several  arts,  and  how  much  they  are  able  to  grow 
out  of  them,  for  their  own  service?  What  is  the  meaning  of  trade 
unions  and  trade  strikes,  that  act  now  throughout  all  advancing 
communities  like  free  masonry,  issuing  their  orders  from  the  grand 
lodges  that  are  the  foci  of  their  mind  and  muscle  ?  Are  they  only 
a  declaration  of  helplessness  under  wrongs  ?  Are  their  frequent 
failures  only  a  proof  of  their  feebleness  ?  Are  they  not,  on  the 
contrary,  the  riots,  insurrections,  and  revolts,  that  ripen  into  revolu 
tions,  arid,  at  last,  establish  governments,  and  administer  them  ?  And 
what  will  come  of  them  when  they  shall  have  blundered,  and  sinned, 
and  suffered  enough  to  grow  wise  and  good  by  their  purgatorial 
development  ?  Slaves,  emancipated  by  powers  not  their  own,  by 
mere  docility  get  into  positions  of  harmony;  but  rebels,  that  work 
out  their  own  freedom  from  actual  bondage,  have  their  own  follies 
and  crimes  to  struggle  with ;  but  nothing  that  they  do  or  leave 
undone  affects  the  final  result,  however  that  result  may  be  postponed 
or  hastened.  The  laws  of  order  are  ever  working  through  their 
disorders,  and  from  seeming  evil  are  still  educing  good. 

The  working  men  of  the  time  see  colossal  fortunes  growing  out 
of  their  toil,  which,  however  better  and  better  requited,  as  it  grows 
more  and  more  efficient  in  producing  its  joint  results  with  capital 
and  machinery,  are  still  not  evenly  divided  to  them.  Their  wants 
grow  with  their  wages,  and  they  want,  above  all  other  wants,  some 
share  of  the  profits,  because  they  think  that  products  are  the  joint 
issue  of  the  agents  which  are  their  parents;  and  they  are  beginning 
to  see  that  lawful  marriage  of  the  generators  of  wealth  must 
establish  the  legitimacy  of  the  issue,  and  the  lawful  claims  of  each 


294  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

party  to  its  production.  Cooperation  is  the  marriage  of  labor  and 
capital,  and  they  are  beginning  to  perceive  that  bone  and  muscle 
must  be  able  to  say  to  capital  "bone  of  my  bone  and  flesh  of  my 
flesh,"  and  let  no  man  put  them  asunder  or  keep  them  asunder, 
that  the  lawful  fruits  of  the  union  may  be  jointly  and  justly 
enjoyed. 


CHAPTER    XXI. 

COOPERATION — STORES,    MANUFACTORIES,    BANKS. 

Cooperation — stores,  manufactories,  banks — embrace  all  the  branches  of  business 
economy. — ''Disjunctive  conjunction"  of  "Political  Economy." — A  science  of 
labor  promises  a  true  political  economy. — Lawless  competition  against  orderly 
emulation. — Cooperative  stores  or  economy  in  expenditure. — Burdens  of  the 
retail  trade. — Force  of  aggregated  capital. — Every  dozen  of  families  support 
one  of  traffickers. — Conditions  of  reform. — Rochdale  Pioneers. — Self-help  and 
self-supply — success. — Profits  rise  with  increase  of  capital  from  four  and  one- 
half  to  twelve  and  one-half  per  cent,  in  twenty  years. — Benefits  and  safety  of 
cash  sales. — Avoidance  of  the  vice  of  "buying  cheap  and  selling  dear." — 
Cooperation  differs  from  ordinary  partnership. — Spread  of  the  system  in 
England. — Statistics. — Central  organization  of  cooperative  societies. — Coopera 
tion  in  Germany. — Herman  Schultze. — One  thousand  associations  in  Germany 
in  1869 — business  of  sixty  millions  a  year.—  Rise  in  connection  with  popular 
education — obstructed  by  French  radical  agitation. — Popularity  among  all 
classes. — German  differ  from  English,  societies. —  Credit  banks — principles  gov 
erning  their  management. — Capital. — Reserve  fund. — Rate  of  interest  indiffer 
ent  to  the  borrower. — Money  value  of  credit — extent  of  the  business. — A  Jacob's 
ladder  of  credit. — Profit  and  loss. — Statistics. —  Statistics  of  all  branches  of 
cooperation  in  Germany. — Interaction  of  banks  and  stores. — Cooperation  in 
Spain. — Education  and  association. — Indoctrination  after  the  manner  of  the 
Roman  Rostrum. — Russia. — Communes. — Emancipation  of  the  serfs. — Rural 
population,  nine  to  one  of  the  total. — Russian  fairs. — Cooperation  indigenous. — 
Insurrectionary  spirit  of  Western  Europe  unfriendly  to  cooperation. — Radical 
ism  in  Prussia. — Agrarianism. — Labor  unions  of  Prussia. — Wages  of  colliers — 
a  strike  and  its  results. — Hostility  of  the  insurgent  spirit  to  property  rights. 

IN  common  use  this  term  is  restricted  to  such  organized  combina 
tions  of  individuals  as  are  designed  to  relieve  them,  as  far  as 
practicable,  of  intermediates  in  productive  industry  and  commercial 
exchange.  Cooperation  is  partnership  in  profits,  equitably  distribu 
ted  in  proportion  to  the  severalties  of  contribution  of  capital,  labor, 
skill,  and  management.  This  is  more  exactly  the  description  of 
those  associations  which  are  properly  called  "  Cooperative  Labor 
Societies,"  or  partnerships  of  industrial  producers. 

Another,  and  in  natural  order,  an  earlier  form  of  cooperative 

295 


296  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

business  associations,  are  partnerships  of  consumers,  who  purchase 
in  gross  such  commodities  as  they  require  for  ordinary  use,  and 
distribute  them  according  to  their  respective  needs,  at  the  least 
possible  cost  of  distribution;  being  jointly  the  owners  and  venders, 
and  severally,  the  final  purchasers  of  the  goods  provided;  thus 
eliminating  the  merchant,  at  least  in  the  last  stage  of  distribution. 
The  company  are  the  purchasers  at  wholesale ;  and  the  agents  of 
the  retail  have  no  interest  in  the  business,  other  than  that  of 
employees,  or  servants,  of  the  company.  This  form  of  the  move 
ment  is  known  as  "  cooperative  stores/' 

There  is  a  third  form — the  natural  outgrowth  of  the  two  stages 
just  noticed,  which  in  Germany  is  styled  "  The  Credit  Banking 
System."  The  emphasis  of  the  descriptive  name  falls  properly  upon 
the  word  credit,  in  the  title.  They  differ  from  the  ordinary  money 
banks  mainly  in  this,  that  they  lend  only  to  the  members,  or 
depositors,  of  whom  each  for  all,  and  all  for  each,  are  virtually  the 
indorsers.  By  this  provision  of  the  organization  credit  is  given  to 
borrowers  who  can  command  credit  nowhere  else,  nor  on  any  other 
possible  conditions. 

Here,  in  these  three  modifications  of  cooperation,  we  have  pro 
vision  made — 1st,  by  cooperative  stores,  for  economy  in  the  necessary 
expenses  of  subsistence ;  2d,  retention  and  equitable  apportionment 
of  all  profits  to  the  active  partners  in  the  production  of  commodities  ; 
and,  3d,  a  provision  of  credit,  and  distribution  of  the  profits  of 
money  as  a  money-maker,  among  those  who  furnish  the  capital 
stock. 

There  are  no  more,  and  no  other,  branches  of  the  economy  of 
the  individual,  and  of  the  household,  than  these.  Men  in  business 
are  either  consumers,  industrial  producers,  or  bankers  in  effect. 
All  the  interests  and  functions  of  material  wealth  and  well-being 
are  these,  and  these  only,  when  reduced  to  their  substantive  forms. 
The  transporters  and  traffickers  in  unorganized  business  are  but  the 
adjectives  or  ministers  of  consumption.  The  capitalist,  the  mana 
ger,  the  employer,  and  the  hireling,  in  productive  work,  merge  into 
one  in  coiVperative  industry;  and  the  Credit  bank  depositor  is  in 
like  manner  lender,  borrower,  and  banker,  in  one,  as  far  as  credit  and 
interest  on  capital  are  concerned.  Put  these  three  forms  and  aims 
of  cooperation  together,  and  the  entirety  of  wealth-producing  and 
wealth-preserving  agencies  are  embraced.  They  mean  that  sub- 


COOPERATION — FORMS   AND    EFFECTS.  297 

sistence  shall  cost  no  more  than  aetual  labor  deserves — that  the 
entire  profits  of  production  shall  be  secured  to  the  actual  producers, 
and,  that  money  shall  yield  all  its  earnings  to  its  true  owners;  and, 
still  further,  that  credit,  or  the  benefits  of  anticipated  earnings, 
shall  be  provided  and  accorded  in  equitable  proportion  to  investment 
and  proved  character. 

Having  passed,  in  our  review  of  societary  progress,  the  partial 
and  incomplete,  in  its  varied  methods  and  means,  and  arrived  at  the 
stage  which  is  logically  symmetrical,  self-sustaining,  and  having  a 
circumference  defined,  and  supported  upon  its  centre;  our  study 
begins  to  take  the  proportions  and  relations  of  a  science. 

Political  Economy,  as  it  is,  has  too  many  incongruities,  too  many 
inconsequences,  too  many  disjecta  membra,  too  many  refractory,  and 
too  many  accidental,  forces,  to  offer  anything  but  a  diversity  of 
topics  for  logical  inquiry.  It  lacks  relation,  dependency,  and 
corroboration  of  points;  but  cooperation,  which,  in  its  inmost  mean 
ing  is  harmony,  looks  as  if  destined  to  work  itself  into  a  system 
that,  with  organized  labor  as  a  basis,  firmament  and  continent,  may 
be  constructed  into  a  science  in  the  true  sense;  having  only  the 
incident  of  exchange,  in  its  present  disorder,  as  an  exceptional 
appendage — an  exception  not  subject  to  law  but  ruled  by  expe 
diency.  The  great  function  of  exchange,  within  the  sphere  of 
organized  labor,  is  controlled  by  its  own  harmonic  principles;  but 
outside  exchange,  reacting  upon  that  within,  is  necessarily  abnormal, 
intrusive,  and  discordant. 

The  deadly  action  of  Competition,  which  is  the  dominant  force 
in  trade,  as  trade  now  exists,  is  in  constant  hostility  to  the  correla 
tive  and  corrective  principle  of  cooperation.  As  an  associative 
stimulus  it  should  take  the  name,  as  it  has  the  character  of  Emula 
tion.  So  long  as  cut-throat  competition  is  the  reigning  spirit  in 
the  world's  business  affairs,  it  will  beleaguer,  invade,  and  disturb 
the  better  order,  and  compel  more  or  less  departure,  for  necessary 
accommodation. 

Cooperative  stores  are  the  earliest  embodiment  of  the  grand  har 
monies  which  progress  must  achieve.  Their  characteristic  features, 
their  working  forces,  and  their  general  results,  will  suffice  for  the 
presentment  of  their  qualities  and  promises.  They  are  but  a  step, 
and,  therefore,  the  first  step,  in  advance  of  the  common  partner 
ships  in  business  affairs,  with  which  the  world  has  long  been 
•  20 


298  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

familiar.  The  principles  involved  are  not  novel,  but  the  parties 
and  the  special  aim  of  their  adoption  is  decidedly  new.  The  opu 
lent  class  have  never  had  any  difficulty  iii  combining  capital  with  a 
view  to  the  profit  of  its  operations  in  large  amounts;  but  coopera 
tive  stores  are  the  invention  of  the  needy,  the  economical,  whose 
policy  is  not  accumulation  directly,  but  economy  of  expenditure, 
pressed  upon  them  by  their  necessities.  Unable,  as  individuals,  to 
buy  at  wholesale,  they  have  been  heretofore  obliged  to  bear 
the  burden  of  many  intermediate  profits,  before  the  necessaries  of 
daily  life  reached  them.  The  support  arid  the  gains  of  a  host  of 
intermediaries  are  always  charged  upon  those  who  must  buy  at 
retail.  The  whole  merchant  class,  with  their  dependencies,  rests 
upon  the  ultimate  consumer,  in  the  old  mode  of  distribution;  and 
the  supporters  of  this  great  burden,  aware  that  their  evils  lie  in 
the  interruptions  of  the  route  between  the  producer  and  consumer, 
begin  their  removal  by  clubbing  their  little  means  into  a  mass  that 
will  advance  them  nearer  to  the  earliest  grade  or  stage  of  purchasers. 
For  this  end  they  require  only  so  much  of  concurrence  and  combina 
tion  as  jointness  of  their  aggregate  contributions  affords.  This  is  far 
short  of  such  agreement  of  action  as  jointness  of  industrial  production 
demands;  and  is  just  so  much  the  more  easy  and  practicable.  A  clear 
perception  of  their  simplest  interest  is  motive  enough,  and  some 
wisdom  in  the  selection  of  the  necessary  agents,  and  trust  in  their 
capacity  and  honesty,  are  all  the  moral  qualifications  required  for 
the  effectual  working  of  the  enterprise.  The  resources  of  the 
company  are  not  the  greatest  difficulty,  by  any  means;  because  the 
individuals  have,  and  must  have,  the  funds  to  buy  the  prime  neces 
saries  of  life ;  and  all  that  is  necessary  is  to  combine  the  little  rills 
of  outlay,  which  are  wasting  in  their  separate  routes  to  absorption, 
into  a  river  of  the  several  affluents,  and  then  they  have  all  the  massive 
strength  of  union.  If  a  hundred  men  must,  and  do,  find  five 
dollars  a  week  each,  to  be  expended  upon  food  for  themselves  and 
families,  purchased  at  retail  prices  greatly  enhanced  by  the  inter 
mediate  charges,  then  they  have,  by  uniting  their  funds,  five  hun 
dred  dollars  in  a  lump,  with  all  the  power  the  larger  sum  gives 
them  to  avoid  the  burden  of  the  middlemen's  support;  and,  what 
ever  this  amounts  to  in  percentage  of  increase  upon  the  wholesale 
costs  is  saved,  less  the  trivial  expense  of  purchasing  and  dis 
tributing  by  their  own  agent,  who  works  in  their  employ  and 


COOPERATION — FORMS  AND  EFFECTS.          299 

for  wages,  without  profit,  and  without  the  temptation  of  the 
trafficker  to  deteriorate  the  quality,  or  reduce  the  quantity  passing 
through  his  hands.  The  possible  savings  of  this  policy  are  not 
easily  calculated,  but  a  safe  basis  for  estimation  may  be  founded 
upon  the  report  of  the  mercantile  agencies  of  New  York,  which 
gives  one  store  and  storekeeper  for  every  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
three  persons  of  all  ages  in  the  United  States.  This  would  give 
one  family  to  be  supported  by  every  twenty-four.  This  statement, 
however,  does  not  embrace  any  but  such  of  these  agencies  as  rank 
as  merchants  who  purchase  their  goods  in  the  principal  cities; 
leaving  out  of  view  the  mass  of  small  traders,  peddlers,  transporters, 
and  other  middlemen,  all  of  whom  live  better  and  more  expensively 
upon  the  profits  of  their  trade  than  do  the  laboring  class  which 
contributes  so  large  a  proportion  of  their  gains.  It  seems  not 
extravagant  to  say  that  every  ten  or  twelve  families  who  live  on 
wages  must  support  one  other  family  in  far  better  style  than  they 
can  live  themselves,  under  the  prevalent  hand-to-mouth  system,  of 
supplies  through  the  multitudinous  machinery  of  the  retail  trade.  To 
get  the  idea  sufficiently  impressed,  one  need  only  walk  the  business 
streets  of  our  cities,  towns,  and  villages,  and  observe  the  unbroken 
blocks  of  retail  stores,  held  at  high  rents,  employing  hosts  of 
dealers,  and  supporting  their  families  and  their  lawyers,  doctors, 
and  clergymen,  with  their  luxurious  indulgence  of  leisure  and 
of  dissipation  added,  to  form  some  idea,  or,  at  least,  feel  some  of 
the  force  of  the  burden  that  the  last  and  poorest  purchaser  of  their 
goods  and  wares  must  bear.  To  get  rid  of  this  prodigious  tax 
cooperative  stores  offer  themselves,  in  theory  at  least,  as  a  remedy 
more  or  less  coextensive  with  the  evil. 

But  there  is  a  wide  distance  between  a  principle  and  the  facts  in 
which  it  takes  effect.  A  thousand  contingencies  intervene;  and  the 
worst  of  all  the  dangers  in  the  route  to  realization,  is  the  incapacity, 
the  unfitness,  of  those  who  most  need  the  working  benefits.  The 
thing  in  itself  is  practicable,  surely.  But  has  it  ever  yet  gone  into 
practice  successfully?  Are  the  necessary  conditions  at  the  command 
of  those  who  would  make  the  experiment?  There  is  one  grand 
model  instance,  which,  however  familiar  to  those  who  have  been 
students  of  the  cooperative  question  and  attentive  to  its  history,  is, 
nevertheless,  such  an  exemplification  of  the  principle  that  it  is 
worthy  of  rehearsal  here. 


300  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 


THE     ROCHDALE     PIONEERS. 

In  November,  1843,  twelve  of  the  laborers  of  Rochdale,  North 
Lancashire,  one  of  the  great  wool  manufacturing  counties  of  Eng 
land,  met  to  talk  over  the  one  great  subject  of  their  life  struggle — 
their  subsistence ;  and  to  devise  some  way  of  making  the  two  ends 
of  the  year  meet  somewhere  else  than  in  the  parish  work-house. 
All  the  usual  resorts  and  devices  of  despair  were  discussed  and 
dismissed;  for  they  had  all  been  tried,  abundantly,  and  had  as 
abundantly  failed.  The  discussion  ended  in  the  conclusion,  "there 
is  no  help  for  us  but  self-help;  and,  as  we  cannot  get  higher  wages, 
there  is  nothing  left  for  us  but  to  make  what  we  do  get  go  further" 
Out  of  that  wondrously  wise  word  there  has  grown  not  only  a 
fabulously  abundant  fruit,  but  an  exemplar  of  the  redemption  of 
labor  from  its  hopeless  pauperism  in  Western  Europe,  and  its  more 
hopeless  strife  with  capital,  yet  to  be  realized,  all  the  civilized  world 
over.  These  twelve  men  made  their  beginning,  and  thirteen  months 
of  persistent  effort  gave  them  a  membership  of  twenty-eight  flannel 
weavers,  and  a  capital  of  £28  (8135).  They  rented  a  store-room,  pay 
ing  the  rent  in  advance,  which,  with  other  expenses,  left  them  at  the 
time  with  only  £15  to  enter  upon  business.  This  sum  they  invested 
in  flour,  butter  and  sugar.  In  1865,  twenty-two  years 

after  their  first  meeting,  the  Pioneer  Society  had  five  thousand  three 
hundred  and  twenty-six  members.  In  the  first  quarter  of  1SG6 
their  sales  amounted  to  £52,870  (equal  to  $1,025,678  for  a  year), 
of  which  the  profit  was  £6,516,  or  twelve  and  one-quarter  per  cent. 
The  stock  of  the  members  amounted  to  about  £15  each,  in  the 
aggregate,  £78,610. 

In  Blackwood's  Magazine,  of  March  1867,  we  have  the  following 
•general  statement  of  results  up  to  the  18th  December,  1866,  being 
taken  from  the  eighty-eighth  Quarterly  Report  of  the  "  Equitable 
Pioneers."  "  The  afl'airs  of  the  society  are  in  a  prosperous  condi 
tion;  the  number  of  members  steadily  increases;  the  amount  of 
cash  received  for  goods  sold  during  the  quarter  was  £68.216,  being 
an  increase  upon  the  corresponding  quarter  of  the  year  1865  of 
£13,042;  the  profits  of  the  quarter,  £9,281.  The  gross  profits  of 
the  year  were  £31,934."  The  gross  profits  for  the  year  appear  to 
be  about  fourteen  per  cent.  Their  goods  being  sold  at  about  the 


COOPERATION — FORMS    AND   EFFECTS.  301 

same  prices  charged  by  other  retail  dealers,  the  average  gains  of 
the  trade  are  fairly  indicated  by  this  percentage  of  advance  upon 
wholesale  cost. 

The  success  of  the  store  operations  is  established.  The  figures 
given  show  the  extent.  Its  prosperity  led  to  an  extension  from  the 
mere  business  of  vending  commodities  to  enterprises  successively 
adopted  for  producing  the  supplies  most  demanded  by  the  custom 
ers.  In  1850  a  butcher  shop  was  set  up.  In  1861,  from  five  such 
shops,  belonging  to  the  society,  they  sold  nearly  six  hundred  thou 
sand  pounds  of  beef,  mutton,  pork,  and  veal.  In  1852,  shoemaking 
and  tailoring;  a  little  later,  coal  dealing,  and  in  1867,  a  bakery 
were  added.  In  1865  these  pioneers  of  the  cooperative  store,  under 
a  different  name  and  organization,  had  a  flouring  mill  running  that 
was  doing  a  business  of  £143,533  with  a  yearly  profit  of  £12,511, 
or  nearly  ten  per  cent.  In  1855  the  same  persons  established  a 
cotton  factory,  employing  three  hundred  hands  and  two  hundred 
and  fifty  looms.  Since  1863  a  building  association  has  arisen, 
employing  a  capital  of  £52,500,  which  furnishes  its  members 
with  good  houses  at  a  reasonable  cost;  and,  to  all  this,  a  life 
insurance  and  burial  society  has  been  added,  with  a  capital  of 
over  £15,000.  So,  the  working  capital  which  stood  at  one  hun 
dred  and  thirty-five  dollars  in  1843,  in  twenty-four  years  grew  ta 
over  one  million. 

These  facts  and  figures  must  be  accepted  as  a  demonstration,  on 
a  large  scale,  and  on  a  sufficient  experience,  of  the  practicability 
and  the  utility  of  the  cooperative  plan  of  self-help  and  self-supply. 
By  this  policy  the  Rochdale  weavers  broke  through  the  thicket  of 
their  distress,  and  fairly  earned  the  title  that  they  prophetically 
gave  themselves — equitable  Pioneers.  They  have  shown  how  the 
poorest  laborers,  on  the  scantiest  wages,  may  escape  the  wretched 
quality,  and  beggaring  cost,  of  such  retail  purchases  as  their  class 
generally  are  exposed  to. 

Beside  the  economy  in  expenditure,  and  the  accumulation  of 
capital  and  credit  secured,  they  have  been  able  to  do  some  other 
things  for  themselves,  quite  as  worthy  of  note.  They  have  a  library 
of  nine  thousand  volumes.  Not  less  than  two  and  a  half  per  cent 
of  the  profits  are  annually  devoted  to  educational  purposes.  In 
1866,  the  sum  of  SI, 450  was  expended  for  newspapers,  microscopes, 
globes,  maps,  and  other  educational  apparatus,  and  increase  of  the 


302  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

library.     The  news  and  reading  rooms  are  provided  with  English 
reviews  and  magazines,  and  metropolitan  and  local  newspapers. 

Does  this  statement  seem  extravagant,  and  such  results,  achieved 
from  such  resources  in  one-quarter  of  a  century,  impossible?  The 
product  is  astonishing — but  not  incapable  of  convincing  proof. 
Every  one  knows  that  single  individuals  have  built  up  fortunes  as 
great,  from  means  as  small,  and  in  time  as  short.  But  the  answer 
is — these  individuals  have  done  it  by  lucky  speculations.  The  thing, 
however,  is  demonstrable  by  the  simple  rules  of  arithmetic.  Let  an 
expert  take  one  shilling  as  capital,  treat  it  as  invested  in  merchan 
dise  paying  a  profit  of  but  ten  per  cent  per  annum,  reinvest  these 
profits,  and  the  interest  also,  four  times  a  year,  and  he  will  see  that 
this  trivial  capital,  united  with  an  equal  amount,  contributed  by  six 
or  eight  thousand  other  persons,  will  bear  all  the  incidental  expenses, 
the  necessary  charities,  and  collateral  donations  to  educational  uses, 
reported  of  the  Rochdale  enterprise,  and  leave  a  working  capital  of 
at  least  a  million  of  dollars.  This  calculation  allows  nothing  for 
withdrawals  of  dividends,  interest  or  principal,  which,  of  necessity, 
must  occur,  and  have,  of  course,  occurred  in  the  business  of  the 
Pioneers.  In  their  eigthy-eighth  quarterly  report,  they  give  the 
account  current  of  their  business  for  twenty  years — from  1845  to 
1864.  The  first  of  these  years  stands  on  their  books  thus  :  1845, 
No.  of  members,  74;  amount  of  property,  £181  12s.  5d.;  amount 
of  sales,  £710  6s.  M.',  profits,  £32  17*.  Qd.  1864,  No.  of  mem 
bers,  4,580  ;  amount  of  property,  £55,840  ;  amount  of  sales,  £174,- 
206  8s.  4(7.;  profits,  £22,163  9s.  9<J.  In  the  twenty  years,  the 
total  amount  of  sales  was  £1,294,830,  the  profits  £130,300— an 
average  of  over  ten  and  one-half  per  cent.  Will  the  reader  notice 
the  vast  increase  of  the  profits  per  cent  on  the  larger  sales  of  the 
last  year  of  this  period.  The  four  and  one-half  per  cent  on  the 
sales  of  1845  could  not  be  made  to  cover  more  than  the  expenses 
of  the  store,  however  economically  conducted ;  but  the  twelve  and 
one-half  per  cent  upon  a  total  of  sales  two  hundred  and  forty-five 
times  greater,  left  a  large  margin  of  net  gain  above  expenses.  This 
is  a  simple  and  direct  demonstration  of  the  benefit  of  increased 
amounts  produced  by  aggregating  lesser  sums,  and  giving  them 
the  momentum,  the  weight  and  velocity,  of  forces  massed  and 
united.  This  is  the  effect  of  association  in  the  material  elements 
of  power. 


COOPERATION — FORMS  AND  EFFECTS.          303 

The  system  uuder  which  this  store  and  its  branches  (for  it  has  as 
many  as  eight  of  them  iu  the  towu)  conducted  business,  needs 
consideration.  The  society  did  not  attempt  to  sell  goods  below  the 
rates  that  individual  dealers  could  afford.  They  attracted  business 
by  the  assured  quality  of  their  goods,  and  by  dividing,  quarterly, 
the  net  profits  among  the  purchasers,  in  exact  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  their  several  purchases.  They  avoided  the  rivalry  and 
strife  of  underselling — a  game  at  which  greater  capital  would  have 
bankrupted  them  so  soon  as  their  business  had  become  worth  the 
crushing,  and  at  which  their  antagonists  would  have  worsted  them 
in  one  day's  struggle.  They  sold  at  the  fair  ordinary  prices  of  the 
general  trade,  registered  the  sales,  and  induced  their  customers  to 
invest  the  dividends,  by  all  that  is  influential  in  the  policy  of 
ordinary  savings  banks,  and  in  the  feeliug  of  property  funded  to 
those  who  never  had  any  other.  A  fair  trial  of  the  plan,  by  which 
nothing  was  hazarded,  had  its  proper  effects.  The  declared  divi 
dends,  however  small,  were  bonuses  to  the  customers  and  were  felt 
to  be  gratuities  in  fact — a  feeliug  happily  expressed  by  an  old 
woman,  who  was  advised  to  draw  out  her  money  from  the  store, 
which  she  was  told  was  going  to  break.  •'  Well,  let  it  break.  If  it 
does,  it  will  break  with  its  own.  I  put  in  but  £1,  and  I  have  £50 
there  now." 

The  store  sold  only  for  cash.  All  the  improvidence  on  the  part 
of  customers,  and  all  the  risks  to  the  vender  of  the  retail  credit 
system,  were  thus  wholly  escaped.  The  sales  were  not  only  for 
cash  but  at  the  current  fair  prices,  by  which  the  purchaser  escaped 
the  temptation  to  buy  and  consume  so  much  the  more,  and  so  waste 
the  difference,  which  the  store  reserved  for  them,  to  be  divided  and 
credited  in  due  time. 

Again,  the  word  "equitable"  had  even  more  potential  signifi 
cance  than  the  word  "pioneers,"  iu  the  title.  The  system  left  no 
place  for,  and  gave  no  encouragement  to,  the  plundering  spirit  of 
"  buying  cheap,"  which  eats  out  the  very  heart  of  honesty.  Here 
there  could  be  none  of  that  higgling  over  price,  which,  if  not 
stealing  quite,  has  the  tone  and  purpose  of  getting  something  for 
nothing,  and  in  turn,  generates  that  kindred  necessity  of  selling 
nothing  for  something,  which  is  called  "  selling  dear,"  in  the  creed 
of  the  worshipers  of  competition.  At  the  pioneers'  store  price 
has  almost  nothing  to  do  in  the  purchase;  the  article  is  good,  and 


30-4  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

the  cost  at  retail,  in  the  end,  will  be  exactly  what  it  costs  wholesale 
with  nothing  but  expenses  added. 

And  again,  these  expenses  are  as  nothing  to  those  of  the 
traffickers,  who  must  gain  custom  by  extravagance  of  advertising  in 
all  its  forms — in  handbills,  gay  fronts,  high  rents,  numerous  clerks 
and  solicitors  for  custom,  with  the  multifarious  expenses  of  the  enter 
prise  which  rivalship  compels.  All  this  mischief  and  its  resulting 
burdens  are  escaped  by  the  store,  whose  attractions  are  the  equitable 
principles  of,  only  good  goods,  cash  sales,  and  pro  rata  division 
of  actual  expenses  and  profits.  Clerks,  storekeepers,  and  all  assist 
ants  alike,  do  their  work  for  their  stipulated  wages,  and  have  no 
temptation  to  either  extend  the  business  by  any  indirection,  or  to 
deal  unfairly  with  any  customer.  The  common  inducements  to 
common  offenses  are  all  that  they  are  exposed  to ;  the  business  adds 
nothing  of  its  own.  It  will  be  observed  that  all  the  features  of  this 
business  look  solely  to  the  one  object  of  making  the  same  outlay 
for  the  necessaries  of  life,  for  the  things  that  we  consume,  go 
further  than  it  can  go  in  the  competitive  retail  trade  that  prevails 
in  the  usual  course  of  business. 

It  has  been  objected  that  the  term,  cooperative,  is  not  strictly 
descriptive  of  the  stores  which  are  distinguished  by  that  name — 
that  they  differ  in  nothing  essentially,  as  a  business  system,  from 
ordinary  commercial  partnerships — from  joint  stock  companies,  or 
from  life  assurance  companies,  that  give  bonuses  to  their  policy 
holders ;  because  all  these  are  either  commercial  associations  or 
dealers  in  something  which  allows  participation  of  profits.  Reduced 
to  their  elements,  and  stated  in  verbal  definitions,  it  may  be  so; 
but  chemists  find  very  different  properties  in  combinations,  pro 
duced  by  mere  differences  in  quantities  and  modes  of  combination 
among  the  same  constituents.  These  stores  are  associative  in 
impulse  and  in  operation,  and  are  in  act  and  fact  cooperative,  in 
many  of  the  best  efficiencies  of  their  working  forces.  There 
is  a  difference  of  degree  in  the  cooperation  that  runs  a  mill  to 
grind  our  corn,  a  shop  to  prepare  our  meat,  or  make  our  boots  and 
clothes,  saving  the  profits  for  the  joint  operators,  and  in  running  a 
store  for  the  distribution  of  their  products  ready  to  enter  into  con 
sumption;  but  there  is  no  difference  of  kind  in  the  cooperative 
movement.  The  difference  of  degree  is  in  this,  that  the  one 
requires  little  more  concurrence  than  paying  money  and  receiving 


COOPERATION — FORMS   AND    EFFECTS.  305 

goods  over  the  same  counter,  while  the  other  demands  a  persona,! 
friendliness,  a  personal  association,  at  least,  and  a  union  of  minds  in 
all  the  processes  necessary  to  production.  At  Rochdale  the  one 
led  to  the  other  by  mere  increase  of  strength,  and  enlargement  of 
trust  and  confidence  in  the  agents  of  the  respective  stages.  It 
seems  to  me  sufficient  to  mark  whatever  of  difference  there  is  in 
them,  by  the  familiar  terms,  cooperative  store,  and,  industrial 
cob'peration. 

The  practicability,  and  the  working  method,  of  the  cooperative 
stores,  have  had  a  largely  varied  trial  in  other  conditions  and  in 
other  hands  than  those  that  belong  to  the  model  instance  which  we 
have  just  detailed,  so  far  as  an  exposition  of  the  system  requires, 
and,  as  might  be  expected,  the  history  has  the  usual  diversity  of 
successes  and  failures. 

The  example  of  the  Pioneers  had  the  effect  of  spreading  a 
net- work  of  similar  societies  all  over  England.  By  an  official 
report,  laid  before  the  British  Parliament,  it  appears  that  in  1863 
there  were  four  hundred  and  sixty  associations  in  England  with  a 
membership  of  one  hundred  and  nine  thousand ;  their  sales 
amounted  to  over  $15,000,000,  their  property  was  valued  at 
$3,000,000,  and  the  profits,  shared  among  the  members  that  year, 
amounted  to  more  than.  $1,000,000.  Most  of  these  were  new 
societies  then;  not  more  than  one-eighth  of  them  over  three  years 
old,  and  only  one  in  fifteen  was  seven  years  old.  The  inevitable 
difficulties  of  beginning  were  upon  the  most  of  them  ]  yet,  they 
were  fairly  successful  and  full  of  promise.  Those  of  the  North 
of  England  created  a  central  association  for  the  purchase  of 
merchandise  at  wholesale.  This  is  managed  by  the  Rochdale 
Pioneers.  In  1865  they  disposed  of  goods  to  the  amount  of 
£142,000  to  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  cooperative  stores,  which 
was  an  increase  of  £55.000  upon  this  business  in  the  preceding 
year.  We  give  these  figures  with  the  dates  for  the  purpose  of 
showing  the  rate  of  their  growth,  which  is  very  striking  in  the  four 
next  succeeding  years.  In  1867  the  number  of  Cob'perative-Store 
Societies  in  England  and  Wales,  registered  under  the  Industrial 
and  Provident  Societies  Act,  was  five-hundred  and  seventy-seven  r 
comprising  one  hundred  and  seventy-one  thousand  eight  hundred 
and  ninety-seven  members;  having  an  aggregate  share  capital  of 
£1,473,199  ($7,144,628);  doing  business  to  the  amount  of  more 


306  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

than  $30, 000,000  annually,  and  realizing  thereon  a  net  profit  of 
nearly  82.000,000,  or  six  and  two-thirds  per  cent  above  expenses. 
The  expenses  of  some  of  these  stores  do  not  amount  to  two  per  cent 
on  the  amount  of  business  done ;  some  of  the  newest  and  weakest 
make  scarcely  any  profit  at  all.  The  best  established,  with  the 
largest  capital  and  business,  clear  as  much  as  ten  per  cent,  and  the 
dividends  of  these  would  be  much  larger  to  their  members,  but  for 
the  very  considerable  amounts  paid  to  customers  who  are  not  mem 
bers;  to  whom,  however,  a  less  rate  is  allowed,  with  the  difference 
inuring  to  the  depositors.  The  percentage  allowed  to  members  is 
generally  as  three  to  two  to  non-members.  A  very  equitable  pro 
portion,  and  one  that  answers  well  all  the  interests  of  both  parties. 

GERMANY. 

The  establishment  of  cooperative  stores  was  later  in  Germany 
than  in  England,  and  did  not,  as  in  the  case  of  the  great  exemplar, 
proceed  from  the  laborers,  but  from  men  who  belonged  to  the  edu 
cated  class.  Herman  Schultze,  of  Delitzsch,  formerly  a  District 
Judge,  and  more  recently  a  Prussian  deputy,  began  in  1850  to 
propagate  the  doctrine  and  to  organize  these  institutions.  The 
movement  took  its  rise  among  small  independent  tradesmen,  formed 
into  societies  which  aimed  by  cash  advances  for  the  wholesale 
purchase  of  raw  materials  and  supplies,  to  maintain  successful 
competition  with  the  manufactories  which,  by  force  of  capital,  held 
the  monopoly  of  production. 

This  movement  already  extends  all  over  G-ermany,  and  throughout 
all  classes  of  its  people.  In  1850  the  associations  numbered  only  half 
a  dozen;  in  1869  they  had  multiplied  to  more  than  one  thousand, 
embracing  three  hundred  and  fifty-thousand  members,  doing  a 
business  of  sixty  millions  of  dollars  in  the  year,  and  holding  three 
and  a  half  millions  worth  of  property.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that 
cooperative  store  societies,  now  so  generally  prevalent,  made  very 
little  progress  for  full  ten  years  after  their  first  introduction.  The 
factory  employees,  who  were  mainly  interested  in  their  formation, 
had  then  but  little  experience  of  any  sort  of  organization,  and  but 
a  vague  and  ineffective  consciousness  of  their  jointness  of  interest, 
and  still  less  notion  of  the  mechanism  required  for  the  advance 
ment  of  their  common  welfare.  Those  most  conversant  with  the 


COOPERATION — FORMS  AND  EFFECTS.          307 

history  agree  that  the  decisive  impulse  followed  upon  the  establish 
ment  of  the  system  of  educational  societies,  which  dates  about  I860. 
Herr  Schultze  was  able  to  report  in  1S61  no  more  than  fourteen 
cooperative-store  societies,  when  there  were  no  less  than  one  hun 
dred  and  sixteen  of  small  independent  tradesmen  whose  operations 
were  limited  to  the  wholesale  purchase  of  raw  materials. 

In  1863  the  movement  was  temporarily  checked  by  the  radical 
agitations,  led  by  the  great  socialist,  Ferdinand  Lasalle,  who 
pressed  upon  the  people  the  French  doctrine  of  help  from  the 
State,  in  opposition  to  the  great  leading  principle  of  self-help, 
which  is  the  corner-stone  and  grand  distinctive  principle  of 
cooperation.  This  conflict  of  policy  led  to  discussion  through  all 
the  ranks  of  the  laboring  population,  and  the  result,  besides  the 
education  in  the  principles  arid  measures  involved,  has  been  such  a 
general  and  resistless  spread  of  the  policy  inaugurated  by  Schultze 
Delitzsch,  that  anything  like  definite  statistics  of  the  progress 
would  be  adequate  only  for  the  immediate  date  of  their  publica 
tion. 

The  plan  or  plans  of  these  German  stores  are  considerable  modi 
fications  of  the  English  Pioneer  system,  without  any  decided 
improvement  upon  it  in  any  particular,  and  upon  the  whole,  less 
sound  in  theory  and  beneficial  in  practice.  They  are,  however,  not 
so  closely  confined  to  the  class  of  workmen.  They  have  been 
adopted  extensively  by  societies  of  civil  officers,  and  military  men, 
and  not  a  few  nobles,  also,  have  availed  themselves  of  the  felt  ad 
vantages;  even  ladies  of  rank  drive  in  their  carriages  to  these  stores 
in  Berlin,  Vienna,  and  Hamburg,  showing  a  general  feeling  in  all 
classes  of  the  community  of  a  necessity  for  reforming  the  retail 
trade.  The  Germans  resident  in  St.  Petersburg,  Russia,  have  also 
adopted  the  policy  to  a  marked  extent.  The  gentry  there  engross 
the  advantages  and  participate  very  largely  through  all  Germany, 
but  on  the  whole,  the  laboring  people  of  Berlin,  Upper  Silesia;  and 
the  Lower  Rhine,  hold  the  greater  share  of  them,  and  in  them. 

The  German  societies  in  general  differ  from  the  English  in  three 
particulars ;  1st,  they,  for  the  most  part,  confine  their  trade  to  their 
own  members,  with  the  view  of  providing  for  their  own  consumption 
more  advantageously  than  they  can  in  the  ordinary  retail  trade,  and 
do  not  seek  gain  by  dealing  with  outsiders.  2d,  the  German 
societies  take  their  dividends  out  of  the  store  as  soon  as  they  are 


308  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

declared  ;  not  looking  to  accumulation  of  the  capital  and  extension 
of  the  business  and  of  its  profits.  3d.  Many  of  the  societies  furnish 
their  members  with  tickets  which  serve  for  purchasing  at  other 
stores,  doing  in  this  way  a  commission  business,  which  is  every  way 
far  removed  from  the  cooperative  principle;  and  forms  no  such  bond 
of  union  as  belongs  to  ownership  of  stock  and  joint  interest  in 
profits. 

CREDIT    BANKS.  • 

In  another  branch  of  economic  association  Germany  has  far  out 
stripped  the  kindred  reforms  of  other  countries.  They  have  added 
to  savings  in  expenditure  for  necessary  consumption,  and  to  joint 
interest  in  productive  industry,  that  other  crowning  achievement 
which  provides  the  capital  of  Credit,  with  all  its  attendant  advant 
ages  ;  thus  completing  the  circle  of  self-supply  in  all  the  elements 
of  material  wealth.  Much  for  the  amelioration  of  the  condition 
of  the  laboring  masses  is  achieved  when  the  profits  of  the  retail 
trade  are  secured  to  the  customers  who  support  it;  much  more  is 
accomplished  when  the  laborer  receives  the  whole  value  of  his  con 
tributions  to  productive  industry;  and  there  only  remains  to  be 
made  provision  for  the  use  of  capital  at  the  easiest  possible  rate — 
this  the  Credit  bank  system  of  Mr.  Schultze  supplies.  Theoreti 
cally,  he  "  regards  capital  as  surplus  produce,  the  result  of  absti 
nence,  set  apart  for  production.  All  that  is  required  for  Credit  is 
security  and  profit  in  production.  The  only  requisites  for  pro 
duction  are  labor  and  capital.  If  labor  can  borrow  capital  there  i& 
no  reason  why  it  should  not  reap  the  usual  profit  of  capital.  The 
great  want  is  security  for  the  lender."  This  he  proposes  to  find  by 
association.  A  single  laborer,  having  no  property,  can  give  no 
security.  He  may  die,  but  in  association  the  aggregate  members 
are  the*security. 

The  essential  features  of  the  plan  are  :  risks  reduced  to  a  mini 
mum  by  granting  loans  only  for  productive  purposes,  and  limiting 
their  amounts  to  the  average  requirements  of  the  borrowers;  and, 
the  maximum  of  responsibility  is  secured  by  limiting  the  borrowers 
to  members  of  the  association.  The  members  being  all  liable  for 
the  debts  of  the  association,  and  the  association  for  the  indebted 
ness  of  the  members.  All  members  are  required  to  pay  an  entrance 
fee  of  one  thaler,  (seventy-two  and  one-half  cents)  and  a  monthly 


COOPERATION — FORMS  AND  EFFECTS.          309 

contribution  toward  the  price  of  a  share,  of  not  less  than  twelve  and 
one-half  cents.  The  shares  are  about  forty  thalers,  each  member 
can  hold  but  one  share,  but  its  full  price  may  be  paid  up  at  once. 
The  capital  of  the  bank  is  the  total  of  the  subscriptions,  and  of  the 
money  borrowed  for  its  use.  The  credit  of  the  bank  is  well  based, 
for  there  is  a  capital,  a  reserved  fund,  and  unlimited  liability  of  all 
the  members.  Responsibility  continues  after  a  member  withdraws, 
but  it  may  be  released  after  twelve  months.  The  reserve  fund  is 
formed  of  entrance  fees  and  a  percentage  of  dividends  with  which 
retiring  members  are  taxed. 

The  gains  are  from  interest  on  money  lent.  The  expenditures 
are  interest  upon  money  borrowed  by  the  bank,  cost  of  adminis 
tration,  and  losses. 

The  business  is  governed  by  the  general  rule  of  lending  for  no 
longer  period  than  the  bank  can  borrow.  The  bank  borrows  at  four 
and  one-half  per  cent,  and  lends  at  from  eight  to  fourteen  per  cent. 
The  rate  of  interest  charged  to  its  borrowers  is  of  little  moment. 
They  are  members  and  receive  again  their  dividend  of  the  surplus 
earnings  of  the  money  so  borrowed  by  the  bank,  and  of  whatever  of 
capital  is  owned  by  the  bank  itself.  The  borrower  here  is  assumed 
to  be  one  who  can  give  no  such  security  as  is  required  by  ordinary 
bankers  or  lenders,  and,  therefore,  can  borrow  nowhere  else.  If  the 
bank  by  its  great  credit  can  borrow  at  say  four  or  five  per  cent,  the 
borrower  from  the  bank  gets  his  supply  from  it  at  no  greater  in 
crease  than  his  share  of  the  expenses  of  the  institution,  no  matter 
what  rate  of  interest  is  charged  to  him.  In  other  words  he  pays  his 
fellow  members  the  smallest  possible  commission  for  substituting 
their  aggregate  and  absolute  credit  for  his  own  individual  negative 
credit  in  the  money  market.  The  money  value  of  this  credit  is  all 
the  profit  which  he  can  make  out  of  capital,  working  for  himself, 
or,  all  the  difference  that  can  be  made  out  of  working  with  capital 
for  its  profits,  and  working  for  capital  at  wages. 

The  success  and  the  rate  of  growth  of  the  system  in  Germany  are 
shown  by  the  following  report  of  its  business  :  in  1862  there  were 
two  hundred  and  thirty-three  credit  banks,  with  seventy  thousand 
shareholders,  doing  a  business  of  810,790,000  in  the  year.  In  1865 
Mr.  Schultze  established  a  central  bank,  to  give  the  smaller  associ 
ations  access  to  the  general  loan  market,  thus  interposing  an  estab 
lishment  of  the  highest  credit,  for  associations  less  known  and 


310  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

esteemed,  just  as  these  interpose  their  higher  credit  for  the  benefit  of 
their  individual  members — a  Jacob's  ladder  of  credit  planted  on  the 
earth  and  reaching  the  zenith  of  the  system.  This  central  bank 
began  with  a  capital  of  8150.000,  in  shares  of  8150  each.  There 
were  in  that  year,  1805,  in  business  connection  with  the  central, 
four  hundred  and  ninety-eight  associations,  having  one  hundred 
and  sixty-nine  thousand  five  hundred  and  ninety-five  members; 
doing  a  business  of  867,509,903.  There  were,  besides,  about  eight 
hundred  other  associations,  with  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
members,  who  made  no  report  to  the  central  bank.  The  losses  on 
this  business  of  sixty-seven  millions  were  but  820,000;  the  net 
profits  were  8371,735. 

The  latest  information  that  I  have,  shows  the  workings  of  the 
cooperative  stores  and  credit  banks  upon  each  other  and  upon  the 
extension  of  the  principle  to  productive  industries.  In  April  1870, 
thirty-seven  societies  of  the  Prussian-Rhenish  provinces  had  com 
bined  agriculture  with  cooperation,  employing  steam  engines  among 
their  implements.  There  were  sixteen  hundred  and  eleven  work- 
ingmen's  banks  and  loan  associations.  Of  these  six  hundred  and 
seventy -five  were  in  Prussia,  four  hundred  and  eighteen  in  Germany 
and  Austria,  and  two  hundred  and  eighty-nine  in  Bohemia.  In  six 
hundred  and  sixty-six  of  these  there  were  two  hundred  and  sixty 
thousand  and  seven  hundred  members,  who  were  working  upon  a 
capital  of  810,240.499,  which  was  all  their  own,  and  on  a  borrowed 
auxiliary  capital  of  832,888,142,  from  which  they  make  an  average 
clear  gain  of  two  per  cent  a  year.  Their  total  business  of  1869 
shows  an  average  gain  of  seventeen  per  cent.  Some  of  the  associ 
ations  do  not  report,  but  so  far  as  is  known,  the  entire  German 
cooperative  societies  number  about  two  thousand  six  hundred  and 
fifty,  with  an  aggregate  of  one  million  members,  and  a  business  of 
not  less  than  $220,000,000,  in  1868. 

The  founder  of  the  German  system,  in  a  recent  publication, 
speaks  of  the  process  of  its  growth,  in  effect,  thus  :  "  With  the 
banks  have  grown  up  'cooperative  stores,'  to  enable  the  members 
to  secure  advances  on  their  work,  and  to  find  in  the  store  a  place 
of  deposit  and  of  sale.  The  guarantee  of  the  maker  enables  the 
store  to  warrant  the  goods  to  the  purchaser,  and,  as  the  manage 
ment  is  in  the  hands  of  practical  workmen,  their  examination  is  an 
incentive  for  the  manufacturer,  and  a  security  for  the  customer. 


COOPERATION — FORMS  AND  EFFECTS.          811 

The  members  of  the  cooperative  stores  and  of  the  banks  are  nearly 
the  same,  so  that  they  are  able  to  participate  in  the  profits  and 
advantages  of  both  institutions;  and  the  workman,  who  gets 
advances  from  the  bank,  is  enabled  to  pay  them  off  promptly  with 
the  proceeds  of  his  work  deposited  in  the  store." 

SPAIN. 

The  formation  of  industrial  societies  was  fairly  commenced  in 
1862;  a  few  of  them  have  a  still  earlier  date.  In  1870  one  hun 
dred  and  ninety-six  were  reported,  with  twenty-five  thousand  mem 
bers,  and  doing  an  aggregate  business  of  twenty-two  and  a  half 
millions  of  dollars  a  year.  The  movement  here  is  exclusively 
among  the  operatives.  An  independent  enterprise,  formed  by 
people  of  wealth  and  education,  for  the  purpose  of  giving  free  even 
ing  instruction  to  workingmen  and  their  children,  beside  its  own 
excellent  objects,  is  made  to  subserve  the  cooperative  movement 
among  the  industrial  populace.  Masses  of  illiterate  men,  who  have 
absolutely  uo  other  means  of  education,  are  brought  together.  The 
method  is  by  lecturing  and  questioning  the  audience  on  topics  of 
household  economy  and  cooperation,  not  unfrequently  mingled  with 
political  discussions,  and  employing  assistants  mixed  with  the 
crowd  to  excite  interest,  and  encourage  participation  by  the 
audience.  In  this  way  cooperative  stores,  bakeries,  social  kitchens, 
and  the  general  policy  of  the  labor  interests,  are  familiarly  and 
effectively  presented.  The  English  and  G-erinan  laboring  people 
have  their  popular  tuition  well  supplied  by  printed  books,  tracts, 
and  newspapers,  but  Spanish  propagandism,  in  lack  of  these,  makes 
its  dusty-foot  forums  answer  for  the  time  and  circumstances  quite 


as  well,  or  better. 


RUSSIA. 


Previous  to  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  the  working  policy  of 
the  Communes  considerably  resembled  the  cooperative  system,  as  it 
might  be  applied  to  agriculture.  The  Russian  Commune  may  be 
generally,  and  sufficiently  well,  described  for  our  purposes,  thus  : 
A  plot  of  fertile  land  containing,  say  one  hundred  thousand  acres ; 
on  its  border  are  situated  the  villa,  stables,  and  offices  of  the  lord 
of  the  manor.  He  owns,  by  inheritance,  ten  thousand  acres,  the 


312  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

remaining  ninety  thousand  are  virtually  the  property  of  the  serfs, 
which  they  work  for  themselves  in  their  hours  of  leisure.  In  the 
centre  is  the  communal  village,  with  the  gardens  and  farms  around 
it.  The  village  has  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  inhabitants.  Each 
of  the  fifty  families  is  entitled  to  garden  and  farm  land  in  equitable 
proportion  to  its  number  in  family,  with  enlargements  or  diminution 
of  area  according  to  the  increase  or  decrease  of  the  number  and 
need.  The  partition  and  appropriation  of  the  lands  is  under  the 
government  of  a  Board,  elected  for  the  purpose  by  universal  suf 
frage.  The  lands  thus  divided  are,  however,  the  property  of  the 
commune,  and  not  of  the  individual  to  whom  they  are  assigned. 
He  cannot  convey  or  sub-let  his  lot.  When  the  households  are 
diminished  by  marriage  or  death  the  Board  alters  the  lot  and 
apportions  the  quantity  deducted  to  a  newly-formed  household  or  to 
some  family  which  has  increased  in  number.  It  is  said  that  no  real 
mischief  results  from  such  changes  of  apportionment,  and  very 
little  trouble  attends  them.  The  commune  is  a  little  republican 
nation,  ruling  itself  comfortably  within  the  limits  of  its  liberty. 
Emancipation  has  made  the  old-time  serfs  nominally  free,  but  it 
has  not,  by  any  means,  removed  the  grievances  of  their  former  con 
dition.  They  are  made  owners  of  their  lands,  but  they  are  bur 
dened  with  the  heavy  obligations  that  in  Russia  attach  to  property 
holding.  When  they  were  slaves  they  enjoyed  almost  the  entire 
product  of  their  lands ;  now,  this  is  taxed  to  a  very  large  part  of  its 
value.  There  are  nearly  six  thousand  of  such  communes  in  the 
country,  with  as  many  chief  villas  or  little  cities,  and  these  are 
taxed  very  heavily  to  meet  the  necessities  of  the  government. 

More  than  ninety  per  cent  of  the  population  is  rural,  and  the 
cities  are  very  few.  The  internal  commerce  of  the  people  is  mainly 
through  their  fairs.  But  little  encouragement  is  afforded  for  build 
ing  towns;  and  the  merchant  class  is  but  an  insignificant  part  of 
the  nation.  The  number  of  the  merchants  is  but  as  one  to  one 
hundred  and  eighty  of  the  population.  The  merchant  evil  is,  there 
fore,  not  very  great,  and  the  need  for  cooperative  stores  is  com 
paratively  small ;  barter  at  the  fairs  answering  most  of  the  ends  of 
necessary  exchanges.  The  agricultural  labor  of  the  country  is 
already  nearly  all  that  cooperation  in  production,  in  that  depart 
ment,  requires;  and  the  communal  habit  and  instinct  are  ready  for 
such  extension  of  the  system  as  the  rising  fortunes  and  expanding 


COOPERATION — FORMS  AND  EFFECTS.  313 

business  of  the  people  may  require.  Feudalism  is  a  rude  outline 
of  industrial  association  in  political  and  social  bondage.  Civil 
liberty,  replacing  slavery,  will  have  less  of  the  savage  spirit  of 
repellant  individualism  to  combat  in  establishing  the  proper  relations 
of  men,  in  Russia,  than  it  finds  in  the  modern  democracies. 

What  we  have  shown  of  the  industrial  cooperative  movement  in 
Europe  will  suffice  for  its  presentment  and  analysis.  It  has  a  foot 
hold  in  Italy,  France,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  as  well  as  in  the  countries 
which  we  have  so  exhaustively  discussed  for  the  purpose  of  exhibit 
ing  its  rapid  growth,  great  success,  and  the  many  modified  forms 
impressed  by  the  characters  of  the  nations  now  making  the  trial. 

In  Europe  the  system  has  encountered  a  great  resistance,  both  as 
to  principle  and  policy,  from  the  insurgent  spirit  of  the  laboring 
class  among  the  nations,  where  the  evils  of  poverty  have  inspired 
a  revolt  against  the  oppressive  dominion  of  capital,  combined 
with  political  despotism.  The  laboring  people  of  Western  Europe 
are  now,  and  have  been  for  a  long  while,  and  threaten  to  continue 
for  a  long  time  to  come,  in  a  state  of  insurrection  against  the  ex 
isting  rule  of  capital  in  production.  France  holds  the  lead  in  the 
agitations  of  theory  and  plans  of  reform,  and  is  formidable  in  pro- 
pagandism  among  the  people  of  Germany,  Italy,  and  Great  Britain. 
Her  philosophy  is  socialistic;  communistic,  and  radical,  in  various 
modifications  of  the  terms;  and  its  doctrines  and  devices  are  hostile 
to  those  of  the  cooperative  movement.  The  principles  and  policy 
of  Ilerr  Schultze  Delitzsch's  system  have  been  everywhere  resisted 
and  embarrassed  by  the  attractive,  and  zealously  urged,  theory  of 
the  French  propagandists.  A  meeting  of  the  Workingmen's  Union 
of  Prussia,  held  in  January,  1870,  at  Berlin,  fully  reflects  this 
influence,  and  exhibits  its  characteristic  features.  There  were 
present  eighty-nine  delegates,  representing  over  twenty  thousand 
contributing  members,  efficiently  organized,  and  a  total  constituency 
of  about  one  hundred  thousand.  After  full  discussion,  resolutions 
were  unanimously  adopted,  embodying  such  doctrines  as  these :  the 
recently  enacted  laws  of  Prussia,  regulating  industry,  are  an  advance 
toward  its  freedom  and  assurance  of  its  rights,  but  the  unequal 
strength  of  labor  and  capital  is  only  increased  by  the  amendment  in 
principle.  This  practical  aggravation  of  labor's  disadvantages, 
however,  will  hasten  the  crisis,  by  precipitating  a  solution  of  the 
social  question.  On  the  subject  of  landed  property,  one  speaker 
21 


314  QUESTIONS    OP   THE   DAY. 

said  that  the  sole  capital  possessed  by  any  one  is  the  capacity  to 
work  ;  the  soil  which  supplies  the  means  is  the  property  of  humanity, 
and  it  is  the  will  of  the  Creator  that  it  shall  be  reconquered  for 
humanity.  The  laborers,  he  said,  are  eighty-six  and  the  proprietors 
are  but  fourteen  per  cent  of  the  population ;  the  laborers  are  the 
real  owners  of  the  land;  all  means  of  production,  including  the 
soil,  should  be  common  property.  With  the  first  productive  organ 
ization,  and  the  assistance  of  the  State,  the  disorganization  of  the 
present,  and  the  construction  of  the  new  order  begins.  The  other 
speakers  concurred,  and  the  convention  adopted  the  sentiments 
expressed. 

The  first  effect  of  the  law  of  1868,  conceding  the  right  of  the 
workingmen  of  North  Germany  to  combine  against  their  employers, 
was  the  formation  of  labor  unions.  The  next,  was  a  strike  of  the 
miners  in  Lower  Silesia,  where  wages  are  lowest,  even  in  Germany; 
a  coal-digger  getting  but  forty-five  cents,  and  a  carrier  but  thirty- 
five  cents  a  day.  These  people  struck  for  higher  wages  in  December 
1869.  Six  thousand  were  thrown  out  of  employment.  In  a  month 
their  funds  were  exhausted  ;  870,000  in  wages  were  lost,  and 
880,000  were  expended  in  supplies.  Then  nine  hundred  married 
men  submitted;  three  hundred  unpracticed  hands  were  added,  and 
the  work  went  on  as  it  best  could,  with  the  diminished  force.  The 
unmarried  men  held  out.  The  final  result  was  a  sort  of  triumph  for 
the  strikers,  at  the  cost  that  may  be  inferred  from  the  submission 
of  those  upon  whom  it  pressed  hardest,  and  the  actual  losses  of  all 
the  re^st. 

It  is  specially  unfortunate  for  the  laboring  people  now  every 
where  combined  in  unions  for  the  betterment  of  their  condition 
and  advancement  of  their  rights,  that  their  speculative  principles 
are  so  largely  derived  from  the  French  school  of  agitators,  who, 
while  organized  as  labor  unions,  are  much  more  largely  occupied 
with  socialistic  and  political  objects.  They  are  better  understood  by 
the  name  assumed  by  their  compatriots  in  Spain  where  they  call 
themselves  "  Unions  of  Resistance."  The  governing  spirit  of  the 
French  movement  is  hostility  to  property  rights,  to  capital  in  the 
hands  of  the  present  holders,  and  resultingly,  to  a  practical  union 
of  existing  capital  with  labor  in  productive  industry.  This  is  not 
progressiveness,  or  reformation,  but  revolution  :  a  war  with,  not  an 
amendment  of,  the  present  order  of  things,  as  impracticable  in  effort 
as  false  in  theory. 


CHAPTER   XXII. 

COOPERATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

COOPERATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES:  Recent  introduction.— Attitude  of  labor 
to  capital  in  the  United  States. — Labor  not  in  despair — saving,  not  the  rule  or 
the  means. — New  England,  harder  pressed  and  more  provident. — Cooperative 
stores  of  the  St.  Crispin  Order — very  few  stores  in  Pennsylvania — none  in  the 
West  or  South. — Very  few  cooperative  industrial  unions  in  the  country. — Troy 
Foundery — immense  profits  of. — Economy  of  cooperative  production. — Dividend 
of  net  profits,  as  wages  for  good  behavior. — Economy  of  material  and  tools  esti 
mated  at  ten  per  cent  of  the  product. — Somerset  Foundery. — Aristocratic  Asso 
ciations. — Advantages  of  the  per  cent  dividend  of  profits — and  faults  of  the  plan. 
— Sjores  ought  to  be  connected  with  cooperative  factories. — Carriage  factory  in 
New  York. — Building  and  Loan  Associations. — First  established  in  Great 
Britain. — The  earliest  in  the  United  States — in  New  Jersej'  and  other  States — 
Failure  of  in  New  York  and  New  England. — Number  and  capital  invested  in 
Philadelphia. — Plan  and  policy — complete  fulfillment  of  the  design  in  ten  years 
or  less. — How  a  renter  becomes  owner  in  a  dozen  years. — Slaves  buy  their 
freedom  with  profits  of  extra  work. — Custom  against  conviction. — Capital 
associated  with  service  in  the  whaling  business. — Possible  savings  of  skilled 
labor  in  the  United  States — accumulation  of  in  three  years,  equal  to  forty- 
three  per  cent  of  the  capital  employed  in  the  nation  in  1860. — French  popular 
loan. — Popular  loans  in  the  United  States  during  the  Rebellion. — Competitive 
versus  cooperative  system. — Labor  Unions  versus  the  union  of  labor. — "  Supply 
and  Demand"  doctrine. — "  Division-of-labor"  doctrine. — Prevalent  political 
economy,  the  apologist  and  philosophy  of  disorder — merely  a  huckstering 
theory. — Bastiat  glorifies  the  cut-throat  competition  of  individualism. — Pro 
fessor  Perry  against  Labor  Unions. — Free  trade  labor  auction. — International 
Labor  League. — Labor  Unions  against  the  union  of  labor  and  capital. — Des 
potism  surrenders  its  own  liberties. — Necessity  and  rightfulness  of  Labor 
Unions. — Tacit  combination  of  capitalists. — Labor  Unions  drifting  and  tending 
to  a  happy  issue,  but  must  be  directed  by  a  policy  of  peace,  self-help,  and 
harmony  with  the  existing  order  of  industry. 

IT  must  be  recollected  that  these  papers  are  studies  in  Political 
Economy,  and  that  we  are  no  further  concerned  with  the  histories 
and  statistics  of  economic  affairs  than  as  they  serve  to  elucidate  the 
particular  subjects  under  consideration.  The  topics  involved  in 
this  section  of  our  inquiries,  are,  for  the  most  part,  concerned  with 

315 


316  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

the  industries  and  exchanges  of  the  passing  time ;  they  are  matters 
of  the  latest  dates.  The  movements  just  now  considered  are  affairs 
of  but  a  dozen  or  twenty  years'  experience.  They  have  scarcely 
settled  themselves  into  permanent  forms.  They  are  all  subject  to 
the  contingencies  of  time  and  trial.  Their  histories  are  rather 
promises  than  accomplished  facts.  Moreover,  it  is  next  to  impossi 
ble  to  collect  reports  of  their  actual  states,  and  as  hard  to  judge  of 
their  working  forces  from  the  immature  experiments  which  they 
have  as  yet  undergone.  They  are  studies  still  even  to  the  agents 
engaged  in  them,  as  well  as  to  those  who  are  only  occupied  with 
their  principles  of  action  and  their  apparent  drift  towards  complete 
realization.  This  is  more  especially  true  of  cooperation  in  the 
United  States.  The  country  is  yet  so  young,  its  conditions  so  full 
of  reliefs  and  escapes  from  the  evils  which  press  upon  the  old 
world,  that  its  people  are  not  driven  with  the  same  force  into 
measures  of  defense  against  social  evils,  everywhere  else  almost 
unendurable.  The  demand  for  labor  here  is  relatively  so  great,  that 
in  respect  to  all  its  products,  except  those  which  foreign  trade 
supplies,  it  is  able  to  command  quite  reasonable  and  mutually 
equitable  terms  from  the  capital  that  employs  it.  At  least,  labor 
here,  however  many  and  however  just  its  complaints,  is  not  in 
despair.  It  is  not  in  the  conditions  that  left  the  Rochdale  Pioneers 
destitute  of  all  hope  except  in  self-help.  For  one  of  our  working 
men  that  lives  in  apprehension  of  the  poor  house,  a  hundred  are 
thinking  of  going  to  the  State  Legislature  or  the  Federal  Congress, 
and  a  thousand  entertain  very  promising  expectations  of  a  house 
and  lot  in  town,  or  a  farm  in  the  West,  in  good  time  for  the  estab 
lishment  of  a  family,  that  shall  begin  life  well  advanced  in  the 
means  of  living  and  of  enjoyment.  The  common  school  in  all  its 
grades,  the  current  instruction  of  the  newspaper,  accessible  to  every 
body,  with  the  examples,  within  every  one's  own  observation,  of 
grand  successes  among  the  poorest  who  aspire  to,  and  industriously 
work  for,  the  advance  of  their  fortunes,  amount  to  an  assurance  of 
hope  full  of  the  happiest  influences.  A  system  of  savings  that 
must  run  twenty  or  thirty  years  to  the  fulfillment  of  the  intention 
has  not  much  attractiveness.  Very  few  of  our  laborers  have  any 
thought  of  living  and  dying  where  they  are  born.  Everything 
among  us  is  on  springs,  and  everybody  is  locomotive.  It  is  a 
wonder  to  find  members  of  three  generations  of  one  family  in  any 


COOPERATION    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES.  317 

of  our  cemeteries,  just  as  it  is  as  likely  that  one  shall  find  a  man 
wearing  his  grandfather's  coat  as  owning  his  grandfather's  land. 
We  are  very  seriously  engaged  in  making  money — making  fortunes, 
rather ;  but  we  are  not  so  hard  pressed  yet  as  to  do  this  by  making 
savings.  A  penny  or  two  of  difference  either  way  in  the  price  of 
a  pound  of  tea,  makes  a  corresponding  difference  in  its  consumption 
in  England.  With  us  a  difference  of  ten  times  as  much  in  the 
cost,  would  never  be  seen  in  our  importations  for  consumption. 
Insurance  institutions  of  every  sort  that  provide  for  accidents,  and 
in  relief  of  casualties,  we  embrace  freely,  but  cooperative  organiza 
tions  for  saving  expenses,  or  for  building  up  fortunes,  are  not  felt 
to  be  pressing  necessities  by  our  common  people.  It  is  for  these 
reasons,  and  owing  to  this  general  state  of  mind,  as  I  think,  that 
neither  cooperative  stores,  nor  industrial  associations,  have  made 
much  headway  among  us.  In  the  New  England  States,  which  have 
drawn  nearer  to  the  conditions  of  the  old  countries  than  any  of  the 
Middle  or  Western  States,  these  stores  are  regarded  as  firmly 
established ;  yet  even  there,  only  forty-two  of  them  were  reported 
in  January,  1870,  and  the  oldest  of  these,  except  one,  had  been  in 
existence  but  three  or  four  years.  Twenty-five  years  ago,  "  Pro 
tective  Unions,"  somewhat  resembling  these  in  aim  and  principles, 
had  quite  a  run ;  but  they  have  all  disappeared  except  one  in 
Worcester,  Massachusetts,  and  it  owes  its  continuance  to  essential 
changes  in  its  administration,  bringing  it  more  nearly  into  con 
formity  with  present  requirements  than  by  the  original  plan  of  its 
organization.  For  the  rest,  it  is  curious  to  observe  that  the  suc 
cessful  establishment  of  cooperative  stores  of  supply,  which  dates 
no  further  back  than  the  year  1866,  is  mainly  due  to  the  auxiliary 
influence  of  the  Order  of  The  Knights  of  St.  Crispin,  which  have 
in  Massachusetts  alone  one  hundred  and  seventeen  lodges,  and 
thirty  thousand  members.  Corroborated  by  the  ties  of  brother 
hood  in  a  secret  society,  and  governed  by  its  organization,  coopera 
tion  in  retail  selling  and  buying  is  made  practicable.  This  Order, 
and  a  dozen  or  a  score  of  similar  orders,  embracing  other  callings 
and  businesses,  exist  everywhere  in  the  Union,  but  scarcely  any 
where  else  have  they  adopted  the  provident  system  of  supplies  in 
the  common  necessaries  of  life — simply,  as  I  suppose,  because 
Yankee  thrift  and  economy  are  nowhere  else  so  imperatively 
demanded.  So  far  as  these  stores  have  been  tried  and  well  man- 


318  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

aged,  they  have  yielded  profits  and  benefits  in  kind  and  degree 
quite  equal  to  the  best  of  similar  establishments  in  Europe. 

Pennsylvania  has  one  successful  store  of  this  kind  in  the  anthra 
cite  coal  region.  It  was  set  up  in  1856;  and  in  1869  was  able  to  make 
a  handsome  report  of  its  business,  its  prosperity,  and  its  prospects. 
There  may  be  others  in  the  Middle  States,  but  if  there  be;  they 
have  gained  no  notoriety. 

It  is  true  that  these  stores  have  in  every  instance  fully  vindicated 
their  policy  when  well  conducted ;  yet  it  is  just  as  true,  that  they 
are  only  adopted  where  their  need  is  most  imperatively  felt. 

The  history  of  industrial  cooperations  among  us  is  still  more 
meagre  of  instances.  There  are  several  examples  of  marked  success, 
indeed,  but  even  these  are  not  organized  on  the  principles  that  cover 
the  whole  broad  ground  of  the  associative  policy.  At  Troy,  New 
York,  for  instance,  thirty-two  iron  moulders,  in  the  year  1866, 
associated  with  a  capital  of  819,500.  They  have  been  abundantly 
successful.  It  is  said  that  they  divided  ninety  per  cent  upon  their 
stock  and  labor  in  the  third  year.  Their  dividends,  however,  were 
not  paid  out,  but  were  invested  in  new  stock  in  the  firm,  enabling  it 
to  employ  more  men  and  rapidly  enlarge  its  business.  But  the  insti 
tution  is  so  far  from  being  an  instance  of  cooperative  association,  in 
the  sense  and  service  which  addresses  itself  to  the  relief  of  the 
industrious  unpropertied  poor,  that  it  is,  in  fact,  only  a  partnership 
of  capitalists,  Or  of  workiugmen  who  are  their  own  employers,  by 
virtue  of  the  considerable  stock  which  they  were  able  to  bring  into 
the  concern  at  its  commencement.  They  had  but  eighty-five  mem 
bers  in  their  third  year,  and  they  hold  it  as  a  condition  of  their 
business  that  there  shall  not  be  more  than  one  member  in  it  for 
every  $2500  of  stock  paid  up.  A  strike  in  1866  drove  them  into 
the  enterprise  on  a  capital  of  $600  to  each  member;  but  the  gov 
erning  policy  is  a  return  to  the  amount  first  determined  upon. 
Notwithstanding  the  enormous  profit  made,  they  do  not  undersell 
their  rivals,  nor  are  they  tempted  to  do  so.  Their  profit  is  princi 
pally  the  result  of  the  economy  in  the  conduct  of  the  business,  due 
to  the  interest  of  proprietorship  in  the  workmen.  The  foundery 
conducts  itself;  for  every  man  in  it  is  an  interested  conductor.  The 
executive  chief  of  the  works  says  that,  "  out  of  twelve  hundred  tons 
of  pig  iron,  we  can  make,  using  the  same  pattern,  one  hundred  more 
tons  of  stoves  than  any  private  establishment  in  Troy."  Here  asso- 


COOPERATION    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES.  319 

elation  gives  a  profit  of  about  ten  per  cent  upon  the  value  of  the 
products.  This  is  margin  enough  for  defense  against  rivalry  in  the 
market,  and  enough  to  build  up  the  fortunes  of  the  partners. 
These  Troy  founderymen  do  not  even  profess  benevolence  to  the 
craft.  They  seek  no  extension  of  their  system ;  but,  availing  them 
selves  of  the  benefit  of  the  associative  policy,  they  derive  its  ad 
vantages  and  demonstrate  its  benefits  to  all  who  would  adopt  it. 

We  have  met  with  another  mode  of  inducing  and  securing 
economy  in  the  use  of  materials,  the  employment  of  tools,  and  in 
crease  of  production,  by  dividing  ten  per  cent,  in  one  instance,  of 
the  net  profit  of  the  business  to  the  workmen,  on  condition  of  good 
behavior  in  all  respects  which  concern  the  prosperity  of  the  pro 
prietors  ;  and  we  have  seen  the  case  in  the  newspapers  under  the 
caption  of  "successful  cooperation."  But  the  scheme  differs  in 
nothing  from  the  common  system  except  in  extending  wages  from 
work  paid  by  the  piece  or  by  time  employed,  to  a  wages  reward  for 
good  behavior.  It  is  worth  notice  that  this  ten  per  cent  of  profits 
so  offered  is  abput  the  equivalent  of  the  ten  per  cent  of  larger  pro 
duct  at  the  Troy  foundery,  and  thus  shows  the  money  worth  of  the 
economy  secured  by  giving  the  workiogmen  the  full  value  of  their 
care  and  fidelity  to  the  proprietary  interests,  and  so,  is  good  evi 
dence  of  the  policy  of  the  association  of  labor  and  capital  in  pro 
ductive  industry. 

There  is  a  foundery  in  Somerset,  Massachusetts,  on  the  plan  of 
that  of  Troy,  a  "  close  corporation,"  confining  its  membership  to  as 
many  as  the  capital  can  employ ;  keeping  its  secrets  and  its  results 
to  itself.  It  was  established  to  make  as  much  money  for  itself  as 
possible,  not  to  prove  that  manufacturers  make  too  much.  Its  basis 
is  fixed  at  $2,000  capital  for  each  member.  They  say  that  no  less 
sum  will  give  a  moulder  constant  and  remunerative  employment; 
that  smaller  subscriptions  too  greatly  enlarge  the  membership,  and 
that  from  this  cause  other  similar  establishments  have  failed,  as 
at  Pittsburgh  and  West  Troy.  This  establishment  gives  support  to 
about  fifty  families.  At  Worcester  "The  Bay  State  Boot  and  Shoe 
Factory"  employed  five  hundred  hands  in  1867.  It  divides  the 
net  profits,  pro  rata,  according  to  the  work  done — to  males, 
earning  above  $100,  and  above  850  to  females.  The  sum  divided 
in  the  first  year  was  equal  to  four  and  one-half  per  cent  of  the 
wages  paid  to  all  the  laborers.  Casual  hands  get  nothing  but  their 


320  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

wages.  The  advantage  to  the  firm  is  constancy  of  the  workmen 
and  the  avoidance  of  strikes — another  instance  of  a  joint  interest 
of  capital  and  labor,  and  of  the  available  influence  of  labor  upon 
capital  found  in  its  reserve  of  moral  power. 

In  a  currier's  shop  in  Boston  a  similar  policy  has  resulted  in 
$100  extra  to  each  of  five  workmen  employed  during  eight 
months.  The  good  results  under  such  a  system  to  the  employer  are 
more  work  from  the  same  tools  and  machinery,  no  strikes,  con 
stancy  of  the  workmen ;  and,  to  the  employees  larger  reward,  or 
reward  for  good  qualities  and  good  behavior,  with  all  the  moral 
benefits  arising  to  them. 

The  injurious  error  in  all  these  plans  for  inducing  the  laborers' 
best  services  by  extra  wages  in  the  form  of  a  dividend  of  the  net 
profits  is  in  distributing,  instead  of  funding,  the  share  of  profits. 
The  sums  so  allowed  are  never  sufficient  for,  nor  are  they  invited 
into  combination,  as  capital  in  the  business;  nor  are  they  of  much 
account  as  saving-fund  deposits.  Their  aggregate  in  large  establish 
ments,  however,  would  be  large  enough  for  the  institution  of 
cooperative  stores.  In  Charleston,  for  instance,  one  such  store,  on 
a  $7,000  capital,  does  a  business  of  $150,000,  furnishing  food  for 
three  hundred  and  eighty-five  shareholders  at  first  or  wholesale 
cost,  less  the  expense  of  management,  and  it  repays,  besides,  to 
non-stockholding  customers  a  good  percentage  upon  their  purchases. 
Such  stores  should  be  connected  with  all  industrial  institutions. 
The  small  extra  dividend  of  profits,  added  to  the  usual  wages, 
impresses  no  one,  but,  joint  ownership  in  a  store  or  bank,  with 
thousands  in  capital,  is  felt,  and  it  works  as  a  force,  over  and  above 
all  the  other  advantages  which  it  affords.  Such  stores  induce  men 
to  settle  down  near  their  place  of  work.  A  rise  of  value  in  adjoin 
ing  real  estate  is  a  noticeable  and  important  result.  The  Troy 
manager  says  :  "  We  have  colonized  the  neighborhood.  Lots  of 
land  that  cost  the  first  purchasers  $123  have  already  risen  to 
$800."  Among  all  the  advantages  of  a  thoroughly  cooperative 
system,  this  last  mentioned  is  not  the  least  important. 

In  the  city  of  New  York  a  very  extensive  carriage  manufactory 
has  now  for  several  years  been  conducted  under  the  policy  of  allow 
ing  the  workingmen  a  dividend  in  the  net  profits,  as  compensation 
for  the  greater  care  and  fidelity  which  a  participation  in  the  value 
of  the  product  induces. 


COOPERATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.         321 

These  instances  are  cited  only  for  the  purpose  of  exhibiting  their 
principles  and  policy.  The  prevalence  of  the  plan  is  so  great  that 
I  cannot  even  attempt  to  enumerate  the  examples,  nor  to  mark  their 
great  variety  of  modifications.  Merchants  have,  time  out  of  mind, 
been  in  the  habit  of  giving  their  chief  clerks  a  share  in  the  profits 
of  their  business,  for  the  purpose  of  securing  and  rewarding  their 
best  services,  and  manufacturers  often  do  the  same  thing.  Such  an 
interest  held  by  a  non-capitalist  employee,  however,  involves  him  in 
the  risks  and  liabilities  of  the  concern  as  a  partner  by  legal  con 
struction,  and  exposes  him  to  the  consequences  of  the  management 
in  which  he  generally  has  no  potential  control.  When  the  extra 
allowance  is  held  as  a  mere  gift  by  the  proprietors,  the  liabilities  of 
partnership  are  escaped,  but  the  interest  accorded  loses  something 
of  the  influence  of  the  possessory  feeling  determinately  settled.  A 
marked  example  is  afforded  in  the  case  of  the  great  Paris  printer, 
M.  Paul  Dupont,  who  carried  on  a  business  of  five  millions  of  francs 
a  year  before  the  late  war  in  France.  He  divided  ten  per  cent  of 
the  net  profits  among  his  workmen,  according  to  their  individual 
merit,  and  not  in  regular  proportion  to  their  salaries  or  wages.  He 
has  done  this  for  twenty  years,  and  has  combined  with  the  system 
of  donatives,  saving  funds,  cooperative  stores,  libraries,  and  benefi 
cial  institutions. 

All  this,  however,  is  not  cooperation  in  its  true  sense.  It  lacks 
the  essential  principle  of  making  the  workman  his  own  employer, 
but  it  proves  the  practical  advantages  to  both  parties  of  giving  the 
employee  a  joint  interest  in  the  results  to  such  an  extent  as 
will  command  the  best  service  by  equitably  rewarding  it.  The  ten 
per  cent  allowance  adopted  in  the  instances  cited  seems  to  be  the 
estimated  profit  of  the  plan  in  almost  all  the  many  cases  which 
have  fallen  under  the  writer's  notice,  and  it  is  repeated  here  as  a 
significant  fact.  Can  it  be  possible  that  the  very  best  hands  at 
wages  are  this  much  less  profitable  to  their  employers,  than  when 
they  are  stimulated  by  an  equitable  regard  for  their  best  care, 
economy,  and  skill  in  the  performance  of  their  work  ?  Capitalists, 
one  with  another,  and  one  time  with  another,  do  not  make  more 
than  ten  per  cent  of  the  product  as  net  profits  for  themselves ;  yet 
it  seems  that  they  can  afford  as  much  to  their  workmen  on  the 
better  plan  of  a  modified  cooperative  system,  and  still  save  as  much 
for  themselves.  We  do  not  give  too  much  emphasis  to  this  practical 


322  QUESTIONS    OF   THE   DAY. 

result  of  an  equitable  distribution  of  the  joint  product  of  capital 
and  labor,  but,  it  illustrates  the  principle  which  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  the  system,  and  prophesies,  while  it  provides,  a  remedy  for  the 
existing  disorders  in  industrial  pursuits. 

Besides  the  forms  of  associated  business  organizations  already 
noticed,  we  have  in  the  United  States,  an  active  and  considerably 
extensive  system  which  nearly  resembles  the  Credit  banks  of  Ger 
many  in  principle,  with  a  difference  in  objects  and  operation,  but 
even  more  immediately  and  largely  capable  of  the  like  intention. 
These  are  thje  Building  and  Loan  Associations.  In  Pennsylvania 
they  are  incorporated  and  regulated  under  a  general  law  of  the 
State.  Edmund  Wrigley,  Esq.,  of  Philadelphia,  in  1869,  published 
a  very  well  digested  exposition  of  their  history,  plan  of  operation, 
and  general  results,  to  which  the  reader  is  referred  for  the  details 
which  are  not  compatible  with  the  limits  and  objects  of  this 
treatise. 

The  first  institution  of  the  kind,  it  seems,  was  established  in 
Scotland  in  the  year  1815,  under  the  supervision  of  the  Earl  of 
Selkirk.  They  thence  gradually  extended  into  the  manufacturing 
districts  of  England  and  Wales;  were  afterwards  established  in 
London,  and  soon  became  general  throughout  Great  Britain,  until 
they  reached  the  number  of  two  thousand  and  fifty  societies  in 
1851,  with  an  annual  income  of  four  millions  of  pounds  sterling, 
according  to  the  report  of  the  Registrar.  The  earliest  in  the  United 
States,  it  is  believed,  was  established  in  Frankford,  Philadelphia 
County,  in  1840.  In  the  City  of  Philadelphia  they  now  hold  the 
first  rank  in  number  and  amount  of  invested  funds.  They  prevail 
very  extensively  in  the  State  of  New  Jersey.  A  few  exist  in  North 
and  South  Carolina.  There  are  some  in  Minnesota,  more  in 
Nebraska,  and  a  considerable  number  in  Baltimore.  In  the  City  of 
New  York  they  have  failed  of  success,  and  they  are  scarcely  known 
in  New  England. 

In  Philadelphia  above  a  thousand  of  these  societies  have  been 
chartered ;  some  of  them  never  organized,  some  failed  through  mis 
management,  a  number  have  closed  their  business  upon  a  complete 
fulfillment  of  their  design ;  and  there  remain  now  about  seven  hun 
dred  in  active  operation,  with  an  aggregate  working  capital  of 
between  five  and  six  millions  of  dollars. 

The  value  of  the  shares  is  limited,  by  the  incorporating  law,  and 


COOPERATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.         323 

is  usually  fixed  at  two  hundred  dollars,  payable  by  the  subscribers 
in  installments  of  one  dollar  monthly  on  each  share.  The  society 
commences  its  business  as  soon  as  a  sufficient  number  of  shares  are 
disposed  of.  The  funds  of  the  society  are  derived  from  the  monthly 
dues  of  the  subscribers,  the  premiums  upon  loans  made  to  the  highest 
bidder  among  the  stockholders,  upon  mortgage  on  real  estate,  the 
profit  retained  upon  withdrawals  of  stock  before  the  ultimate  result  is 
reached,  and  very  largely,  from  the  interest  upon  loans  which  is  paid 
monthly,  and  reinvested  during  their  continuance.  The  great  accre 
tions  of  interest  compounded  monthly  are  seen  in  the  fact  that  one 
thousand  dollars,  at  six  per  cent  simple  interest,  paid  annually,  doubles 
itself  in  sixteen  years  and  eight  months,  while  the  same  sum,  with  its 
interest  compounded  monthly,  doubles  in  eleven  years  and  seven 
months.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  in  less  than  twelve  years  the 
interest  alone  would  refund  their  money  to  the  subscribers,  and  it 
is,  therefore,  quite  credible  that  some  of  these  institutions,  by  the 
addition  of  fines  and  premiums  added  to  the  accruing  interest,  are 
able,  as  they  have  proved  actually,  to  complete  their  enterprise  in  ten 
years.  A  few  very  well  managed  ones  have  accomplished  their 
intention  in  even  less  time.  Mr.  Wrigley  gives  the  figures  to  show 
how  a  tenant  availing  himself  of  the  profits  of  membership  in  a  build 
ing  and  loan  association,  by  adding  about  twenty  dollars  a  year  to 
the  rent  of  a  house,  may,  in  eight  or  ten  years,  become  the  owner  of 
one  equally  valuable. 

By  complying  with  the  conditions  of  membership  a  man,  by  so 
small  an  advance  upon  his  ordinary  rent,  gets  possession  of  a  lot  of 
land  suitable  for  his  use,  erects  a  building  upon  a  loan  from  the 
society,  secured  by  mortgage  upon  the  premises,  and  without  much 
additional  effort  eventually  becomes  the  owner.  The  association  is 
to  him  a  credit  bank,  enabling  him  to  anticipate  the  savings  of  a 
dozen  years,  and  to  enjoy  their  fruits  in  the  mean  time,  all  the 
while  perfectly  secure  of  the  result,  and  ever  afterwards  the  absolute 
owner  in  fee  of  his  domicile.* 

The  argument  from  successful  instances  might  be  greatly  ex 
tended,  without  being  proportionately  strengthened.  The  advant- 

*The  activity  of  this  movement  in  Philadelphia  is  only  fairly  indicated  by  the 
fact,  that  of  thirty-two  applications  for  charters  to  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas,  at 
the  April  term,  1871,  seventeen  were  for  building  and  loan  associations,  while 
seven  of  the  remainder  were  for  beneficial  societies. 


324  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

ages  of  reformed  and  improved  methods  in  the  conduct  of  men's 
business  affairs  are  more  frequently  demonstrated  than  adopted. 
Human  nature  is  not  by  any  means  a  stupid,  but  it  is  a  very  willful, 
thing.  It  may  be  convinced  without  being  practically  conformed. 
Many  years  ago,  a  slaveholder  in  Louisiana,  sold  their  time  to  his 
slaves  to  be  paid  for  out  of  the  value  of  their  extra  work.  Two  or 
three  successive  sets  of  them,  under  this  stimulus,  purchased  their 
freedom.  The  proprietor  made  more  money  out  of  them  by  this 
policy  than  if  he  had  sold  their  bodies  upon  the  auction  block.  No 
one  failed  to  see  the  pecuniary  advantages  of  the  system,  and — no 
one  adopted  it.  They  maintained  the  slave  system  till  it  exploded. 
Customs  obstinately  resist  convictions  and  conditions,  and  usually 
refuse  reform  until  revolutions  compel. 

Where  business  cannot  be  safely  or  profitably  conducted  upon  the 
wages  system,  partnership  of  profits,  without  capital  invested,  is,  of 
necessity,  accorded,  as  in  the  whaling  business,  which  has  been 
carried  on  for  a  century  in  the  United  States  under  this  kind  of 
cooperation,  or  policy  of  rewards  proportioned  to  risks  and  services 
requiring  the  higher  qualities  of  the  laborer. 

Reformers  are  very  confident  that  the  best  way  of  doing  things 
will  sooner  or  later  be  adopted ;  but  it  is  well  for  them  to  possess 
their  souls  in  patience,  for,  usually,  it  is  only  when  no  other  way 
will  work  at  all  that  the  best  is  accepted.  Nothing  short  of  oft- 
repeated  business  disasters  in  the  cotton  States  will  drive  the 
planters  into  a  system  of  self-sustaining  and  self-supplying  diversi 
fication  of  agricultural  production.  Slavery  is  abolished  there,  but 
the  industrial  system  proper  to  it  must  die  by  inches,  and  the  inci 
dental  suffering  will  be  ascribed  to  anything  and  everything  else 
than  the  inherent  vice  of  the  obsolete  policy.  Every  season  that 
their  crop  goes  into  the  market  which  it  gorges,  the  planters  see 
and  acknowledge  the  mischiefs  of  their  system,  and  threaten  a 
reform,  and  accordingly  (to  custom)  never  do;  but  they  will,  when 
no  choice  is  left  to  them,  and,  probably,  not  before. 

Under  correction  of  these  convictions,  let  us  now  look  at  the 
practicability  and  necessity  of  cooperation  in  productive  industry. 

The  relation  of  labor  to  capital  in  modern  production  is  shown 
by  the  census  of  1850,  I860,  and  1870,  to  hold  the  proportion  of 
about  twenty  per  cent  of  wages  to  the  value  of  the  products.  If 
we  deduct  ten  per  cent  from  that  value  for  the  profits  of  capital, 


COOPERATION    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES.  325 

the  agency  of  labor  in  the  business  is  about  twenty-two  and  one- 
quarter  per  cent  or  two-ninths  of  the  investments  concerned  in 
the  work  or  business.  Labor's  equitable  share  cannot  be  claimed 
to  be  more  than  one-quarter  of  the  joint  product  of  capital, 
machinery,  and  industry  at  wages.  In  other  words,  the  accumula 
tions  of  past  labor  are  as  three  to  one  in  the  forces  currently 
employed  in  further  production  in  the  manufacturing,  mining,  and 
mechanic  arts,  as  they  are  now  carried  on  in  the  United  States. 

This  shows  the  part  that  capital  plays  in  these  branches  of  busi 
ness,  and  labor's  dependence  upon  it,  for  its  effectiveness,  that  is, 
the  measure  of  the  relations  subsisting  between  them. 

There  are  now  about  six  millions  of  Americans  working  for 
wages.  Suppose  that  their  savings  could  be  made  to  reach,  in  the 
average,  seventy-five  dollars  a  year;  the  aggregate  would  be  four 
hundred  and  fifty  millions — a  very  pretty  capital  this  if  associated 
in  active  use.  Now  let  us  see  how  such  possible  accumulation  of 
savings  in  other  than  agricultural  pursuits  counts  up.  In  I860 
the  reported  capital  invested  in  such  business,  consisting  of  real 
and  personal  estate,  including  cash  and  credit,  amounted  to  one 
thousand  and  ten  millions  ]  the  raw  materials  consumed  in  the  year 
cost  one  thousand  and  thirty-one  millions,  and  the  wages  of  labor 
three  hundred  and  seventy-nine  millions.  The  products  were 
valued  at  eighteen  hundred  and  eighty-five  millions — products  to 
capital,  one  hundred  and  eighty-six  per  cent. 

There  were  one  million  three  hundred  and  ten  thousand  hands 
employed.  Their /savings,  at  seventy-five  dollars  per  annum  each, 
would  be  ninety-eight  and  a  quarter  millions.  Add  to  this  sum. 
accumulated  in  one  year,  the  credit  which  it  would  command,  and 
we  have  a  working  capital  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  millions,  equal 
to  fourteen  and  one-half  per  cent  of  the  capital  which,  in  1860, 
yielded  eighteen  hundred  and  eighty-five  millions  of  products,  and 
which  would,  at  the  same  ratio,  give  them  one-seventh  of  the  total 
yield  of  the  mines,  mechanic  arts,  and  manufactures  of  1860.  But 
their  wages  that  year  amounted  to  one-fifth,  or  twenty  per  cent 
of  the  product.  This  loss  of  current  profit  is  to  be  set  to  the 
account  of  the  real  estate  and  machinery  which  must  be  provided 
to  begin  with.  A  larger  capital  must,  therefore,  be  provided. to 
increase  the  profits.  Take  two  years  savings,  and  the  yield  would 
be  twenty-nine  per  cent  of  the  product  of  1860,  and  three  years, 


326  QUESTIONS    OF   THE    DAY. 

by  the  same  rule,  would  cover  forty-three  and  a  half,  or  seven- 
sixteenths  of  the  like  yield — the  usual  wages  being  all  the  while 
allowed  for  current  support,  less  the  savings  assumed  to  be  prac 
ticable. 

We  conclude  that,  whatever  may  be  said  upon  the  moral  possi 
bility  or  probability,  of  such  cooperation  of  the  laborers  as  might 
achieve  these  grand  results,  the  economic  possibility  is  demonstrable, 
and  its  realization  is  the  right  drift  of  reformatory  endeavor.  The 
latent  capability  of  the  masses  has  been  more  than  once  demon 
strated  within  the  last  twenty  years.  The  instances  show  how  the 
account  stands  between  the  aggregate  of  existing  and  disposable 
capital,  and  the  possible  savings  of  the  industrial  masses. 

In  France,  when  Louis  Napoleon  required  a  large  loan  for  the 
purpose  of  carrying  on  the  Crimean  War,  he  turned  from  the 
bankers  of  Europe  to  the  people  and  asked  them  for  five  hundred 
millions  of  francs.  They  subscribed,  and  were  ready  to  pay  into 
the  treasury,  fifteen  hundred  millions  !  In  the  United  States,  in 
the  second  year  of  the  great  Rebellion,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  appealed  to  the  people  of  the  loyal  States  (when,  if  the 
whole  capital  of  the  banks  had  been  emptied  bodily  into  the  Treas 
ury,  it  would  not  have  sufficed),  and  they  responded  by  furnishing 
him  with  one  hundred  and  forty  millions  of  dollars.  This  vast  sum, 
of  which  not  less  than  eighty  millions  were  supplied  by  the  working 
people,  was  a  trifle  compared  to  the  contributions  from  the  same 
source  in  the  following  three  years  of  the  war. 

Our  argument  thus  far  assumes  or  supposes  a  continued  antag 
onism  of  capital  and  labor.  But  capital  is  not  necessarily,  and  will 
not  long  be,  actually  excluded  from  fraternity  with  industry.  As 
we  have  seen,  in  Germany,  the  people's  Credit  banks  borrow  money 
abundantly,  and  take  all  its  profits,  beyond  the  interest  paid.  So 
everywhere,  the  accumulated  wealth  would  easily  be  drawn,  upon 
sufficient  securities,  into  a  partnership  of  harmonized  interests. 
Property  is  not  robbery,  as  the  French  Socialists  regard  it;  and 
communism,  as  they  propose  it,  is  opposed  in  all  its  features,  alike  to 
individual  rights  and  the  general  welfare,  and  is  at  the  same  time, 
the  worst  enemy  of  true  association.  False  principles  inserted  into 
the  machinery  of  associative  organizations,  must  in  the  end  grind 
themselves  out,  by  the  counter-working  of  the  essential  truths  which 
they  encounter ;  but  at  all  the  cost  of  the  sufferings  and  failures  of 


COOPERATION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.         327 

misdirected  effort  and  misapplied  power.  It  is  not  the  strikes,  which 
express  hostility  to  capital,  that  achieve  any  of  the  triumphs  casu 
ally  secured,  but  it  is  the  power  of  combination,  which  they  evince, 
that  indirectly  furthers  their  intention. 

COMPETITION    VCrSUS    COOPERATION. 

"  These  are  contrary  the  one  to  the  other,"  as  St.  Paul  says  of 
the  "lustings  of  the  flesh  against  the  spirit  and  of  the  spirit  against 
the  flesh."  We  have  already  noticed  the  conflict  between  the 
Delitzsch  system  and  that  of  the  French  radical  reformers  as  it 
occurred  in  the  earlier  days  of  the  cooperative  movement  in  Ger 
many,  and  indicated  the  obstructive  action  of  the  "  Labor  Unions" 
upon  the  union  of  labor  in  Europe  and  America.  This  spirit  of 
antagonism  between  the  two  great  parties  into  which  the  pro 
gressives  and  the  revolutionists  of  the  laboring  mass  are  divided,  has 
one  of  its  roots  in  the  common  and  natural  feeling  of  resistance  to 
wrong  and  its  resulting  evils;  and  another,  in  the  theoretical  system 
of  a  very  large  and  influential  body  of  political  economists,  who 
have  for  their  help  the  essentially  rebellious  spirit  of  modern 
civilization.  The  authorities  upon  which  the  competitive  school 
stands,  justify  its  spirit,  but  curiously  enough,  while  they  oppose 
the  procedure  of  the  "  Labor  Unions,"  supply  their  doctrinal  basis. 
Adam  Smith  and  after  him  J.  B.  Say  and  John  Stuart  Mill,  teach 
that  the  law  of  "  supply  and  demand"  is  the  sole  regulator  of  the 
rewards  of  labor,  as  well  as  of  the  value  of  all  products ;  and  they 
all  alike  insist  upon  the  free  play  of  this  law  of  theirs  in  all  circum 
stances,  and  in  all  cases  of  exhange.  No  place  or  force  is  allowed  by 
this  theory  for  combination  of  either  labor  or  wealth  to  regulate 
prices.  The  authorities  of  this  school,  on  the  contrary,  agree  in 
sustaining  the  philosophy  and  policy  of  free  competition  between  the 
producers,  the  consumers,  and  the  venders  of  all  commodities,  and 
between  the  individuals  of  each  class.  They  all  alike  hold  that  the 
utmost  possible  division  of  labor,  both  in  industrial  production  and 
in  territorial  distribution,  is  its  highest  and  happiest  organization, 
and  the  aim  and  end  of  all  possible  improvement  of  its  system,  and 
the  thing  to  be  pursued  and  achieved;  which  means  nothing  else, 
under  the  present  order  of  things,  than  the  reduction  of  the 
industrial  classes  into  a  wonderfully  complicated  form  of  machinery, 


328  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

with  capital  for  its  motor  power,  director,  and  employer.  Indeed, 
when  closely  examined,  the  system  of  doctrines  which  we  have 
accepted  from  them  is  simply  a  logical  underpinning  of  the  very 
order  of  things,  which  the  "  Unions"  are  organized  to  resist  and 
which  the  theory  of  reform  criticises  and  condemns.  It  is  simply 
an  endeavor  to  find  a  philosophy  that  will  justify  the  reigning 
disorder  in  the  existing  relations  of  capital  and  labor.  A  philosophy 
which  considers  the  well-being  of  neither  producer  nor  consumer, 
but,  looking  only  to  the  interests  of  the  trader,  has  all  the  law  and 
the  prophets  in  this,  the  greatest  of  its  commandments,  "  buy 
where  you  can  buy  cheapest  and  sell  where  you  can  sell  dearest." 
The  life  and  soul  of  this  school's  teachings  is  fully  expressed  by 
Frederick  Bastiat,  and  accepted  by  his  party  everywhere  as  the 
latest  and  best  of  its  oracles,  thus :  "  Competition  is  democratic  in 
its  essence ;  the  most  progressive,  the  most  equalizing,  and  the 
most  communistic  of  all  the  provisions  to  which  Providence  has 
confided  the  direction  of  human  progress."  If  further  exposition 
and  application  of  this  fundamental  principle  were  wanting,  we 
have  it  in  the  language  of  Professor  Perry,  the  American  champion 
of  the  system,  explicitly  given  in  these  words:  "The  guilds  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  the  Trades  Unions  of  our  own  day,  are  examples 
of  voluntary  associations  for  the  purpose  of  regulating  the  wages  of 
their  members  by  combined  action.  *  *  The  spirit  of 

Political  Economy,  which  is  the  spirit  of  freedom,  is  against  such 
associations  for  such  purjioses.  If  any  man  has  a  service  to  render, 
let  him  offer  it  freely,  and  make  the  best  terms  he  can  with  who 
ever  wants  it."  This  is  free  trade  carried  from  the  province  of  in 
ternational  exchange  of  commodities  into  the  domestic  workshop, 
where  not  only  products,  but  all  that  has  a  market  value  in  the  body 
and  brains  of  the  producers,  are  to  be  subjected  to  a  chaffering  and 
huckstering  of  manhood  for  money. 

The  International  Labor  League,  established,  I  believe,  in  1864, 
and  the  Labor  Unions  which  are  in  sympathy  with,  and  sustain  it, 
drift  in  the  same  channel — they  are  all  Unions  of  resistance,  to 
capital,  first  and  always,  and  to  cooperative  industrial  associations, 
next,  because  these  accept  and  avail  themselves  of  the  ruling  order 
in  the  functions  of  productive  industry,  and  withdraw  themselves 
from  the  hostile  array  of  the  resistants;  their  attitude  being,  in 
effect,  a  protest  against  the  doctrines  and  policy  of  strife,  and  their 


COOPERATION    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES.  329 

successes  a  demonstration  of  the  harmony,  or  rather  identity,  of 
interests  in  the  parties  now  unhappily  and  unwisely  at  war. 

Labor  Unions,  by  their  scales  of  prices,  indeed,  prohibit  compe 
tition  between  the  members  of  the  same  craft,  but  this  is  done  only 
the  more  effectually  to  maintain  competition  between  the  buyers  and 
sellers  of  labor.  They  do  not  aim  at  the  abolition  of  the  wages 
system,  but,  by  all  the  force  which  combination  can  command,  to 
rule  its  rates,  and  compel  compliance  of  the  capitalists  who  employ 
it.  Their  constitution  is  one  of  unnatural  and  impracticable  inde 
pendence — independence  attempted  in  an  order  of  things  of  which 
the  essence  and  governing  spirit  is  mutual  inter-dependence  !  To 
assert  its  own  rights  and  liberties  it  wars  upon  the  rights  and 
liberties  of  the  party  opposed ;  and  in  their  procedure  this  uni 
versal  law  follows  them  and  vindicates  itself — "  Whoever  will  put 
a  chain  on  the  heels  of  any  man  shall  have  the  other  end  of  it 
fastened  around  his  own  neck."  The  spirit  of  domination,  must 
to  itself  be  despotism — freedom  must  be  surrendered  by  any  that 
deny  it  to  others.  War  cannot  be  maintained  but  by  implicit 
obedience  to  the  commanders.  The  soldier  in  any  field  of  strife 
puts  his  liberty  and  life  under  the  power  of  his  commanders. 
The  array  is  cooperation  in  bondage,  just  as  the  association  of  a 
poor-house  is  brotherhood  in  beggary.  Whoever  closely  watches 
the  situation  of  Unions,  driven  to  extremes  of  resistance,  will  see 
reason  for  the  saying  that  "  the  way  to  make  hell  is  to  turn  a 
heaven  upside  down." 

Trades'  Unions  are,  nevertheless,  not  only  thoroughly  well  war 
ranted  by  principle,  but  they  also  derive  no  small  authorization  from 
their  universal  prevalence.  Every  trade,  and  every  distinct  branch 
of  every  trade,  is,  in  the  cities  and  principal  villages  of  all  free 
countries,  effectively  organized.  This,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  coopera 
tion,  and  is  capable  of  its  best  uses.  It  is,  indeed,  a  necessity. 
Without  such  concurrence  as  true  and  rightly  directed  association 
secures,  workingmen  would  be  helpless  in  the  hands  of  their  em 
ployers.  They  would,  in  lack  of  mutual  support,  invite  despotism 
in  the  management  of  their  business  interests.  The  very  best 
promise  of  the  very  best  results  to  such  Unions  is  in  the  great  fact 
that  they  are  capable  of  association.  In  the  multitude  of  coun 
sellors  there  is  safety,  when  a  common  interest  brings  them  into 
conference.  The  capitalists  who  now  hold  the  machinery  and 
22 


330  QUESTIONS    OF    THE    DAY. 

materials  of  production,  which  in  relative  value  and  efficiency  are 
as  three  to  one  against  the  labor  employed,  are  easily  combined  for 
their  own  purposes.  They  are  tacitly  and  effectively,  even  where 
they  are  not  formally,  united  in  action,  as  in  interest.  The  coun 
terpoise  of  Unions  among  workingmen  for  the  like  purpose  is  just 
as  legitimate,  but  not  more  or  less  so.  When  righteousness  and 
peace  meet  they  may  kiss  each  other,  but  self-defense  at  least  is  a 
necessity  where  strife  is  the  rule.  The  machinery  is  right  in  so  far 
as  it  is  mutual  and  necessary;  and  the  comfort  in  it  is.  that,  work 
as  widely  as  it  may  from  the  right  way  in  the  days  of  its  infancy, 
the  trials  and  training  of  experience,  leading  it  forward  still,  and 
upward,  through  defeats  and  triumphs,  through  all  its  sins  and 
sufferings,  as  well  as  successes,  will  be  ever  tending  toward  the 
desired  ends.  That  saying  of  Goethe  is  every  way  true — "  A  good 
man,  even  in  his  dark  strivings,  is  ever  in  the  right  way."  But  the 
sooner  workingmen  attain  to  soundness  of  directory  principle,  a 
clear  view  of  the  true  aim  of  all  their  efforts,  and  an  earnest  con 
formity  in  practice,  the  sooner  they  will  escape  the  troubles  and 
sufferings  of  the  educating  discipline  which  they  must  more  or  less 
undergo.  They  are  "  endeavoring  to  keep  the  unity  of  the  spirit  " 
among  themselves,  but  they  must  be  careful  to  observe  the  other 
limb  of  the  Apostle's  injunction — "in  the  bonds  of  peace/'  They 
must  learn  that  they  must  adjust  themselves  to  whatever  there  is  in 
the  order  of  things  which  cannot  be  resisted,  and,  as  a  first  step 
toward  the  reform  of  their  circumstances,  put  themselves  right.  Do 
they  intend  to  take  the  rule  of  the  world's  business  affairs  into  their 
own  hands,  for  their  own  benefit  ?  Let  them  begin  by  ruling  their 
own  share  of  that  business,  and  thus  test  their  fitness,  and  qualify 
themselves  for  the  agency  they  would  assume.  Until  they  are 
generally  capable  of  cooperation  within  the  range  of  their  present 
possibilities,  they  will  not  be  ready  to  administer  the  whole  range 
of  industrial  operations;  and,  when  they  are  so  capable,  they  will 
not  need  or  desire  to  usurp  a  larger  authority. 


APPENDIX. 


THE    LAW    OF    CLIMATE    IX    PARTY    POLITICS. 

THE  reader,  if  a  student  of  economic  and  social  questions,  cannot 
fail  to  feel  a  profound,  and  at  the  same  time  a  curious,  interest  in 
the  climatic  law  of  migration,  generally  and  briefly  stated  in  our  fourth 
chapter.  He,  perhaps,  will  have  looked  for  our  reasons  for  dividing 
North  America,  including  Canada,  into  three,  rather  than  any  other 
number  of,  political  departments,  under  the  rule  of  geographic  and 
isothermal  laws.  It  would  be  tedious  to  indicate  the  details  of  fact 
and  speculation  upon  which  the  division  adopted  seems  to  me  to 
rest.  Mr.  Carey,  in  his  first  announcement  of  the  law,  arranged 
the  States  and  territories  of  the  United  States  into  four  climatic 
zones  or  belts,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  appended  article  extracted 
from  Forney's  Press  of  the  22d  of  December,  1859,  and  in  my 
statistical  elucidation  I  followed  the  scheme  of  his  proposition. 
This  point  resting,  as  it  does,  upon  speculation  (which  I  trust  may 
never  be  verified  by  a  corresponding  political  division  of  the  Union), 
and  liable  to  such  a  number  and  force  of  counter-balancing  influ 
ences  as  promise  to  effectually  prevent  its  demonstration  in  the 
experience  of  the  nation,  may  be  remitted  to  the  consideration  of 
the  curious.  The  isothermal  divisions  may  be  fixed  at  three  or 
four  or  six,  as  further  and  closer  examination  shall  dispose  inquirers 
to  determine.  The  number  within  this  range  is,  in  point  of 
principle,  indifferent. 

The  idea  of  such  natural  divisions  of  the  territory  of  Xorth 
America,  with  corresponding  political  organizations,  is  not  new, 
though  the  law  upon  which  they  rest  has  been  so  lately  promulgated. 
"While  the  adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution  was  in  debate,  the 
writers  of  the  Federalist  gave  the  question  of  the  possible  number 
of  distinct  governments,  that  would  result,  on  failure  of  the  general 

331 


332  APPENDIX. 

union,  their  most  earnest  attention;  and  it  is  curious  to  notice  that 
Mr.  Jay,  in  the  fourth  number  of  that  inspired  work,  speaks  of 
three  or  four  possible  governments,  into  which  the  original  thirteen 
States  might  be  divided.  Alexander  Hamilton  in  the  thirteenth 
number,  devoted  almost  exclusively  to  this  subject,  holds  this 
language : 

"  The  entire  separation  of  the  State?  into  thirteen  unconnected  sovereign 
ties,  is  a  project  too  extravagant,  and  too  replete  with  danger,  to  have 
many  advocates.  The  ideas  of  men  who  speculate  upon  the  dismember 
ment  of  the  Empire,  seem  generally  turned  towards  three  confederacies : 
one  consisting  of  the  four  Northern,  another  of  the  four  Middle,  and  a  third 
of  the  five  Southern  States.  There  is  little  probability  that  there  would  be 
a  greater  number." 

This  he  gives  as  the  more  generally  prevailing  notion  of  the  dis- 
uuionists  of  the  time  ;  but,  now  look  at  his  own  management  of  the 
premises,  and  the  results  which  he  draws  from  them  : 

"If  we  attend  carefully  to  geographical  and  commercial  considerations, 
in  conjunction  with  the  habits  and  prejudices  of  the  different  States,  we 
shall  be  led  to  conclude,  that  in  case  of  disunion,  they  will  most  naturally 
league  themselves  under  two  governments.  The  four  eastern  States,  from 
all  the  causes  that  form  the  links  of  national  sympathy  and  connection,  may 
with  certainty  be  expected  to  unite.  New  York,  situated  as  she  is,  would 
never  be  unwise  enough  to  oppose  a  feeble  and  unsupported  flank  to  the 
weight  of  that  confederacy.  There  are  obvious  reasons,  that  would  facili 
tate  her  accession  to  it.  New  Jersey  is  too  small  a  State  to  think  of  being 
a  frontier,  in  opposition  to  this  still  more  powerful  combination ;  nor  do 
there  appear  to  be  any  obstacles  to  her  admission  into  it.  Even  Penn 
sylvania  would  have  strong  inducements  to  join  the  northern  league.  *  *  * 
The  more  southern  States,  from  various  circumstances,  may  not  think 
themselves  much  interested  in  the  encouragement  of  navigation.  They 
may  prefer  a  system,  which  would  give  unlimited  scope  to  all  nations,  to 
be  the  carriers  as  well  as  the  purchasers,  of  their  commodities.  Penn 
sylvania  may  not  choose  to  confound  her  interests  in  a  connection  so 
adverse  to  her  policy.  As  she  must,  at  all  events,  be  a  frontier,  she  may  deem 
it  most  consistent  with  her  safety,  to  have  her  exposed  side  turned  towards 
the  weaker  power  of  the  southern,  rather  than  toward  the  stronger  power 
of  the  northern  confederacy.  *  *  Whatever  may  be  the  determination  of 
Pennsylvania,  if  the  northern  confederacy  includes  New  Jersey,  there  is 
no  likelihood  of  more  than  one  confederacy  to  the  south  of  that  State." 

The  number  of  the  Federalist  from  which  this  extract  is  made, 
is  dated  November  28. 1787,  and  Hamilton  was  then  considering  the 


APPENDIX.  333 

divisions  into  which  the  old  thirteen  States  must  immediately  fall, 
if  the  adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution  should  fail. 

To  understand  him  exactly  the  opening  words  of  this  last  quota 
tion  must  be  attentively  noted ;  he  says  :  "  if  we  attend  carefully  to 
geographical  AND  commercial  considerations,  in  conjunction  with  the 
habits  and  prejudices  of  the  different  States,"  that  is,  of  the  States 
then  existing,  they  would  most  naturally  league  themselves  into  two 
government,  in  the  event  of  their  immediate  separation. 

The  purpose  of  these  citations  is  to  show  that  the  natural  divisions 
of  the  Union  as  held  by  the  observant  men  and  enlightened  states 
men  of  that  day  correspond  sufficiently  well  to  aiford  the  support  of 
observation  and  experience  to  the  climatic  distinctions  of  pursuits, 
populations,  and  policy  which  Mr.  Carey's  law  alleges.  And  just 
here  the  late  fulfillment  of  Hamilton's  theoretical  views,  by  the 
great  Rebellion,  is  sufficiently  close  to  give  great  weight  to 
the  climatic  principle  which,  though  unknown  to  him,  was  the 
efficient  cause  of  the  effects  which  he  clearly  understood.  The 
division  between  the  loyal  and  the  secession  States  in  1861  fell 
just  where  Hamilton  indicated  it,  though  with  a  strip  of  "  debatable 
land/'  consisting  of  Delaware,  Maryland  and  Kentucky,  between 
the  broadly  and  decidedly  separated  States. 

We  would  have  it  noticed,  also,  that  the  lines  which  are  given  as 
the  supposed  boundaries  of  the  division  into  three  governments,  as 
well  as  that  one  which  Hamilton  fixes  between  the  two  political 
organizations  which  he  thought  the  more  probable,  all  alike  run 
east  and  west,  and  that  they  correspond  accurately  to  well  dis 
tinguished  belts  of  temperature. 

The  phenomenon,  like  the  full  of  the  apple,  was  familiarly  known, 
and  it  only  remained  for  a  Xewton  in  social  science  to  reveal  the 
law,  and  give  it  exactness  of  application. 

On  the  36th  page,  ante,  we  ventured  to  assert  that  if  the  climatic 
law  of  migration  and  inhabitation  of  the  earth  is  true,  it  must  be 
also  true  that  science,  literature,  and  religion  must  obey  it ;  and  in 
their  migrations,  follow  the  same  line  of  march,  and  this  for  the 
obvious  reason  that  the  races  who  modify  opinion  and  speculation, 
according  to  their  respective  mental  and  moral  constitutions,  and 
impress  themselves  upon  all  their  pursuits,  enterprises,  and  achieve 
ments,  migrate  along  their  several  lines  of  climate;  let  me  now  add 
that  the  politics  of  the  emigrants  carry  with  them  their  native  hue, 


334  APPENDIX. 

of  which  rather  astounding  doctrine,  the  annexed  article  is  sub 
mitted  as  curiously  but  conclusively  in  proof.  We  commend  it  to 
examination,  especially  of  those  who  may  meet  it  with  the  strongest 
feeling  of  incredulity ;  and  we  take  the  liberty  besides  of  recommend 
ing  our  younger  readers  to  take  up  the  census  report  of  1870,  so  soon 
as  it  shall  be  published,  and  for  themselves  try  the  doctrine  upon  the 
facts  which  it  will  afford  them.  The  method  and  process  of  the 
inquiry  are  plainly  indicated  in  our  management  of  l^ie  problem. 
Moreover,  we  take  the  liberty  of  saying  here,  to  young  men,  ambi 
tious  of  distinction  in  the  practical  questions  of  social  and  economic 
relations,  that  without  a  good  ground-work  in  statistics,  they  will 
never  attain  an  available  and  well-assured  proficiency  in  political 
economy.  This  advice  seems  all  the  more  required  after  the  fre 
quent  and  emphatic  denials  that  we  have  given,  in  the  course  of 
this  book,  to  the  commonly  preferred  claims  made  by  statisticians 
and  politicians  for  their  arithmetical  data. 

(From  THE  PRESS  of  Thursday,  December  22,  1859.)* 

PENNSYLVANIA'S  POSITION  IN  THE  UNION. 

A  letter  written  by  MR.  CAREY,  our  well-known  political  economist, 
to  a  friend  in  Massachusetts,  and  first  published  in  the  Boston  Tran 
script  of  the  26th  November  last,  is  attracting  very  general  atten 
tion  among  the  politicians  who  are  concerned  with  the  forecast  of 
the  coming  Presidential  campaign.  The  subject  of  the  letter  is 
the  proverbial  preponderance  of  Pennsylvania  in  our  national 
elections.  It  is  a  fact  that  no  candidate  for  the  Presidency  has  yet 
been  elected  by  the  popular  vote  of  the  Union  against  or  without 
the  vote  of  Pennsylvania,  except  the  elder  ADAMS.  In  1824,  she 
gave  her  twenty-eight  electoral  votes  to  JACKSON,  which  secured 
his  plurality  of  fifteen  in  the  electoral  college.  In  the  seventeen 
Presidential  elections  of  the  past,  her  vote  has  uniformly  indicated  the 
choice  of  the  nation,  except  in  the  case  of  JOHN  ADAMS.  Yet,  it 
is  also  true  that  only  in  one  instance  has  her  electoral  vote,  of  itself, 
determined  the  result;  that  is,  the  majority  of  the  successful  can 
didate  has  generally  been  larger,  sometimes  greatly  larger,  than  the 
number  of  her  electors  in  the  college. 

MR.  CAREY,  looking  for   the  causes  of  a  fact  so  steady  and  reg 
ular  in  its  manifestation,  traces  them  to  conditions,  circumstances 
*See  note  on  page  39,  an'e. 


APPENDIX.  335 

and  facts,  where  they  have  not  heretofore  been  looked  for.  It  is 
obvious  enough  that  a  State  which  has  never  held  more  than  one- 
seventh  of  the  electoral  power  of  the  Union  could  not  thus  con 
stantly,  by  her  own  proper  power,  determine  its  Presidential  elections. 
It  must,  therefore,  be  ascribed  to  some  constant  cause  of  concurrence 
with  her  political  action,  on  the  part  of  other  States,  whose  votes, 
with  hers,  make  up  the  constitutional  majority  which  she  is  ob 
served  to  lead  or  carry  with  her. 

For  the  natural  cause  of  such  concurrence  and  sympathy  of 
political  action,  MR.  CAREY  inquires,  and  finds  it  as  he  believes,  in 
the  law  of  emigration,  or  that  tendency  which  determines  men  to 
choose  their  new  residences  in  climates  nearly  resembling  those 
which  they  are  accustomed  to  previously  to  their  removal.  The 
circumstantial,  or,  in  philosophical  language,  the  accidental  cause 
of  Pennsylvania's  constant  supremacy  in  the  politics  of  the  nation, 
is  in  the  fact  that  she  is  one  of  a  number  of  States  which  are  the 
balance  of  power  in  the  Union.  The  States  which  lie  north  of  her 
northern  line  of  latitude  are  so  nearly  balanced  against  those  which 
lie  south  of  her  southern  line,  that  her  power,  combined  with  that 
range  of  central  States  of  which  she  is  the  exponent,  easily  deter 
mines  the  contest  in  favor  of  one  or  the  other  party.  Divided  as 
the  North  and  South  are,  and  have  ever  been,  the  middle  or  central 
States  as  they  lie  geographically,  and  the  moderate  and  conservative 
as  they  always  are  politically,  must  have  the  power  to  hold  the 
antagonists,  on  either  side  of  them,  at  arms-length,  and  to  settle 
their  disputes  by  the  exertion  of  the  balance  of  power  principle, 
and  thus  maintain  the  position  of  political  supremacy  in  the  Union. 

To  present  MR.  CAREY'S  views  upon  the  subject  of  emigration, 
and  its  political  results  in  our  history,  we  extract  his  own  very  brief 
and  general  statement  : 

"To  begin,  let  me  ask  your  attention  to  the  simple  law  which  governs 
the  movements  of  men,  who  by  the  process  of  peaceful  emigration  are 
seeking  improvement  of  their  condition.  Look  where  you  may,  you  will 
see  that  such  persons  seek  the  nearest  approach  to  the  temperatures  to 
which  they  have  been  accustomed — the  Highlander  going  to  Canada,  and 
the  Irishman  coming  to  our  middle  States,  leaving  to  the- Spaniard  and  the 
Portuguese  the  more  sunny  lands  of  the  South.  So,  too,  has  it  been  among 
ourselves — the  people  of  New  England  having  overrun  New  York  north  of 
the  highlands,  a  part  of  northern  Pennsylvania,  the  northern  third  of  Ohio, 
Indiana,  Illinois,  and  Iowa,  and  having  settled  the  three  northwestern 


336  APPENDIX. 

States:  those  of  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Delaware,  and  Maryland, 
having  meanwhile  colonized  nearly  all  the  remainder  of  the  four  Western 
States,  and  being  likely  soon  to  occupy  the  larger  portion,  if  not  almost  the 
-whole,  of  the  Territories  which  are  now  to  enter  the  Union  as  the  States  of 
Kansas  and  Nebraska. 

"  To  Virginia  and  North  Carolina  have  fallen  the  Territories  that  are  now 
Kentucky,  Tennessee,  and  Missouri,  while  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  have 
taken  possession  of  Alabama,  Mississippi,  Louisiana,,  and  most  of  Arkansas 
and  Texas.  As  a  consequence  of  this,  we  find  the  Union  divided  into  four 
great  zones,  the  white  population  of  which,  as  ascertained  by  the  last  census, 
may  approximately  thus  be  stated  : 

Northern,  say 8,000,000 

Northern  Central 5,700,000 

Southern  Central 4,000,000 

SoutherD 2,300,000 

20,000,000 

"  Nearly  three-tenths  of  the  voting  population,  as  here  is  shown,  sympa 
thize  much  with  Pennsylvania,  and  hence  it  is,  and  not  merely  by  reason  of 
her  own  intrinsic  strength,  that  as  she  goes,  so  goes  the  Union.  Not  only  are 
the  tendencies  of  this  portion  of  our  people,  as  now  exhibited,  eminently 
conservative,  but,  as  reference  to  history  shows,  they  have  been  more  con 
sistently  in  accordance  with  the  ideas  of  the  men  who  made  the  Revolution, 
than  those  of  any  other.  Hence  it  is  that  they  have  been  so  much  in 
harmony  with  those  of  North  Carolina,  Kentucky,  and  Tennessee,  as  well 
as  with  those  of  the  better  days  of  Virginia,  all  of  these,  with  Missouri, 
now  passing  so  rapidly  toward  freedom,  constituting  the  Southern  centre." 

The  propositions  of  our  author  here  given  are  so  new,  and,  in  all 
respects,  so  important  for  other  purposes,  as  well  as  for  those  of 
national  politics,  that  we  have  taken  the  pains  to  subject  the  data  on 
which  they  are  made  to  rest  to  a  careful  examination.  Let  us  state 
the  results  in  our  own  way.  After  examining  the  facts  and  figures 
as  thoroughly  as  our  time  and  resources  allowed,  we  found  that 
State  boundaries,  as  they  exist  between  the  north  and  north-central 
zones,  could  not  be  made  to  conform  to  the  facts  of  the  case,  as  they 
turned  up  under  examination.  Nor  do  they  serve  with  mathematical 
accuracy  for  the  limits  of  the  more  southern  zones.  As  lines  of 
latitude  and  lines  of  equal  temperature  were  not  consulted  in  the 
location  of  State  boundaries,  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  exact 
correspondences  between  isothermal  and  territorial  lines  should 
occur.  Adopting  the  four  zones  of  MR.  CAREY,  however,  on 
grounds  that  seem  to  us  entirely  conclusive,  we  locate  them  thus : 


APPENDIX.  337 

Taking  the  southernmost  point  of  Connecticut  for  a  starting  point, 
the  southern  line  of  the  north  zone  will  fall  at  about  411  degrees  of 
north  latitude.  This  line,  carried  westwardly,  will  cut  Pennsylvania 
a  little  south  of  Wilkesbarre,  Williamsport,  and  Mercer,  on  the  Ohio 
boundary,  and  will  throw  all  the  Pennsylvania  counties  north  of  it 
into  the  north  zone.  The  same  line,  carried  through  the  State  of 
Ohio,  will  pass  by  Warren,  Norwalk,  and  Defiance,  on  the  Indiana 
border,  throwing  something  between  one-fourth  and  one-fifth  of 
Ohio  into  the  north  zone.  The  same  line,  continued  westwardly, 
will  throw  about  one-seventh  of  the  State  of  Indiana,  one-fourth  of 
the  State  of  Illinois,  and  three-fourths  of  Iowa,  into  the  northern 
zone.  For  the  southern  line  of  the  north-central  zone  we  adopt  the 
thirty-ninth  degree  of  north  latitude.  This  line  enters  at  Cape 
May,  passes  by  Annapolis  and  Bladensburg,in  Maryland,  and  through 
Hardy  and  Barbour  counties,  in  Virginia,  and  enters  Ohio  at  the 
mouth  of  the  great  Kanawha  river.  Two  or  three  counties  of  Ohio, 
about  one-seventh  (at  the  southern  end)  of  Indiana,  and  one-fifth  of 
southern  Illinois  (Egypt),  will  fall  south  of  this  line ;  and  entering 
Missouri  above  the  mouth  of  the  Illinois  river,  and  emerging  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Kansas  river,  throws  the  northern  two-fifths  of 
Missouri,  or  all  north  of  St.  Louis,  into  the  north-central  zone. 

The  south-central  zone,  bounded  on  the  south  by  the  thirty- 
fifth  degree  of  latitude,  and  by  the  thirty-ninth  parallel  en  the 
north,  will  embrace  the  southern  half  of  Delaware,  the  southern 
half  of  Maryland,  nearly  all  of  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  all  of 
Kentucky,  Tennessee,  the  southern  corners  of  Illinois  and  Indiana, 
the  southern  three-fourths  of  Missouri,  and  the  northern  half  of 
Arkansas. 

To  the  south  zone  will  fall  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida, 
Alabama,  Mississippi,  the  southern  half  of  Arkansas,  Louisiana, 
and  Texas. 

Carrying  these  lines  out  to  the  Pacific  coast,  the  northern  one- 
fourth  of  California  falls  into  the  north-central,  the  middle  half 
into  the  south-central,  and  the  southernmost  one-fourth  into  the 
south  zone. 

Now,  let  us  look  at  MR.  CAREY'S  law  of  emigration  as  the  census 
of  1850  exhibits  the  facts  involved  in  it: 

In  Michigan  the  whole  number  of  immigrants  was  257,006.  Of  these, 
there  were  born  in  the  north 


338  APPENDIX. 

New  England,  New  \\rk,  (and  British  America,  14,008) 178,717 

Born  in  north-central  zone 33,103 

Born  in  the  south-central 1,504 

Born  in  the  south  zone 401 

Born  in  Europe 39,023 

Thus,  of  the  inhabitants  not  born  in  the  State,  five-sevenths  were 
from  the  north  zone,  including  Canada ;  one-seventh  from  all  the 
States  south  of  the  north  zone,  and  one-seventh  Europeans. 

In  Wisconsin  there  were  242.376  immigrants.  Of  these,  202,758, 
or  five-sixths  of  the  whole  number,  were  born  in  the  north  zone  and 
in  Europe.  In  the  north-central  zone  31,066,  or  a  little  less  than 
one-sixth  of  the  whole,  and  in  all  the  more  Southern  States  only 
4,413,  or  about  one-fiftieth. 

Passing  from  these  two  new  States,  which  are  high  up  in  the 
north  zone,  to  two  which  lie  low  in  the  south  zone,  we  have  the 
following  facts  from  the  census : 

In  Alabama,  the  whole  number  of  immigrants 183,324 

Born  in  the  south  zone 108,720  or  TV 

Born  in  the  south-central 64,143  or  ^ 

Born  in  New  England 1,861  or  ^g- 

Born  in  all  the  other  States 2,367 

Born  Foreigners 6,538 

In  Mississippi,  the  whole  number  of  immigrants 155,793 

Born  in  the  south  zone 83,242 

Born  in  the  south-central 62,465 

Born  in  New  England 923 

Born  in  all  ihe  other  States 3,482 

Born  Europeans 5,500 

Here  only  one-thirty-fifth  of  the  whole  number  of  immigrants  in 
Mississippi  were  born  in  the  States  north  of  39°  north  latitude. 

From  these  instances,  we  think  the  truth  of  MR.  CAREY'S  gen 
eral  proposition  is  well  sustained.  Emigration  is  ruled  by  climatic 
laws.  We  purposed  to  exhibit  the  same  law  as  it  applies  to  the 
Western  States  which  lie  in  the  two  middle  zones,  but  must  content 
ourselves  now  with  stating  that  their  statistics  bear  as  closely  upon 
the  proposition  under  consideration  as  those  of  the  States  on  the 
extreme  Xorth  and  South  given  above. 

The  emigration  from  Europe  supports  the  theory  well.  Of 
those  from  England,  Ireland,  and  Scotland  only  one  in  fourteen 
were  found  in  the  States  lying  south  of  39  degrees  north  latitude; 


APPENDIX.  339 

while  of  the  Germans,  one  in  seven  are  in  that  zone,  as  it  is  determined 
by  the  lines  of  latitude ;  but  one-half  of  these  are  in  Texas  and 
Missouri,  and  even  here  the  climatic  law  most  probably  prevails,  for 
while  the  isothermal,  or  lines  of  equal  temperature,  correspond  very 
nearly  with  the  parallels  of  latitude  as  far  west  as  the  Mississippi 
river,  those  which  enter  the  Atlantic  coast  at  the  40th  and  35th 
degrees  of  north  latitude  deflect  rapidly  beyond  the  Mississippi 
southward,  falling  as  low  in  middle  Texas  as  the  35th  and  30th.  So 
that  while  a  large  portion  of  Missouri  is  in  the  north-central  zone, 
as  determined  by  geographical  lines,  a  very  large  portion  of  the 
north  and  west  of  Texas  is  in  the  same  zone,  as  determined  by  its 
mean  annual  temperature.  If  this  point  holds,  as  we  suppose  it 
must,  then  the  German  emigration  is  no  exception.  One-half  of 
the  number  must  be  subtracted  for  the  States  of  Texas  and  Missouri, 
and  this  will  restore  the  average  to  one  in  fourteen  of  the  foreign 
immigrants  settled  in  the  south  zone. 

It  will  be  recollected  by  our  readers  that  the  isothermal  lines  in 
that  part  of  Europe  from  which  our  emigrants  come  lie  about  ten 
'degrees  farther  north  in  Europe  than  they  do  in  the  Atlantic 
States  of  the  Union.  Great  Britain  and  Prussia  lie  above  the 
fiftieth  degree,  and  all  the  rest  of  Germany  above  the  forty-fifth  of 
north  latitude.  Their  emigrants  to  this  country  find  their  customary 
temperature  above  the  thirty-fifth  and  fortieth  parallels  here,  and 
accordingly  the  census  reports  thirteen  out  of  fourteen  of  them  re 
siding  in  the  States  above  these  lines,  or,  more  accurately,  within 
the  isothermal  lines  of  their  native  countries.  This  fact  obtains  so 
accurately  that  the  Danish  and  Norwegian  immigrants,  whose  native 
countries  are  above  the  sixtieth  parallel,  are  found  in  this  country 
in  our  most  northern  regions.  From  Sweden  there  were  2,449  in 
the  north  zone ;  in  the  south  only  436.  From  Norway  there  were 
in  the  north  zone  11,705 ;  in  the  south  zone  but  211,  and  105  of  these 
were  in  Texas.  And  while  there  were  147,711  from  British  America, 
only  1.067  of  them  were  found  south  of  the  thirty-ninth  parallel. 

We  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  man  as  a  cosmopolite,  and  per 
haps  too  hastily  conclude  that  he  is  so  much  less  governed  by 
climate  than  animals  and  plants  are,  that  he  is  at  once  independent 
and  regardless  of  temperature.  But  the  statement  evidently  needs 
correction.  The  species  is  adapted  to  all  climates,  but  the  families 
and  kindreds  are  governed  by  it  in  their  migrations.  This  to  us  is 


340  APPENDIX. 

a  new  and  surprising  result  of  this  investigation.  We  are  helped 
by  it  to  understand  the  destination  of  the  African  race  among  us. 
It  is  a  question  of  geography  much  more  than  of  institutions  with  all 
the  races.  In  a  new  country  like  ours,  w^iere  immigration  has  the 
power  to  determine  the  institutions,  sentiments  and  pursuits,  avoca 
tions  and  opinions;  natural  temperament  and  civil  polity,  go 
together,  and  this  may  be  the  reason  why  the  controlling  influence 
of  climatic  laws  has  not  before  exhibited  itself  to  observation. 

The  next  step  in  the  theory  we  are  considering  is,  that  the  emi 
grants  from  Europe,  and  especially  those  from  the  Eastern  States  of 
the  Union,  carry  with  them  the  characteristics  of  the  several  regions 
from  which  they  remove,  and  so  give  a  similar  complexion  to  their 
political  creeds  and  industrial  policies.  We  have  laboriously  ex 
amined  the  votes  of  the  zones,  as  we  have  located  them,  in  the  last 
Presidential  election,  and  we  obtain  the  following  results : 

In  those  sixteen  counties  of  Pennsylvania  which  lie.  according  to 
our  division,  above  41J  degrees  of  north  latitude,  and  within  the 
north  political  zone,  FREMONT  had  39,916  votes,  FILLMORE  1,107, 
and  BUCHANAN  24,908.  FREMONT'S  plurality  over  BUCHANAN,  in 
these  counties  which  belong  to  the  north,  and,  as  we  see,  voted  with 
it,  was  15,008,  or  as  40  to  25.  In  the  balance  of  the  State, 
BUCHANAN'S  vote  was  205,802,  FREMONT'S  107,594,  or  nearly  two 
to  one. 

In  those  sixteen  counties  of  Ohio  which  lie  north  of  the  political 
line,  FREMONT  had  39,488  votes,  BUCHANAN  22,042— a  plurality 
of  17,446.  FREMONT'S  plurality  in  the  whole  State  was  but 
16,623.  Again,  in  the  State  election  of  last  October,  the  whole 
Republican  majority  was  13,500,  while  in  the  Western  Pxeserve — 
the  counties  which  we  give  to  the  north  zone — the  majority  of  that 
party  was  15,000,  showing  that,  outside  of  these  counties,  the  Demo 
crats  had  1,500  majority. 

In  the  nineteen  counties  of  Illinois  which  lie  above  the  line  of  the 
north-central  zone,  FREMONT  had  41,847  votes;  BUCHANAN  had 
16,122 — plurality  over  BUCHANAN,  25,725.  IQ  the  other  counties, 
BUCHANAN'S  plurality  over  FREMONT  was  34,784.  Not  a  county 
in  Illinois  south  of  40  degrees  gave  FREMONT  a  majority,  and  some 
of  them,  in  the  extreme  south  of  the  State,  gave  him  no  more  than 
2,  5,  and  9  votes  respectively ;  but  these  last  lie  all  below  the  39th 
parallel,  and  belong,  therefore,  bodily,  to  the  south-central  zone. 


APPENDIX.  341 

In  the  tvs*elve  counties  of  Indiana  which  are  north  of  the  line  as 
sumed,  FREMONT  had  15,835  votes;  BUCHANAN,  12,752;  but  in 
the  whole  State  BUCHANAN'S  plurality  over  FREMONT  was  24,295. 

Iowa  gave  FREMONT  a  plurality  of  7,784  votes,  but  in  the  coun 
ties  lying  south  of  the  north  zone  BUCHANAN'S  plurality  over  FRE 
MONT  was  above  4,000  votes. 

Looking  at  the  States  and  parts  of  States  lying  in  the  north  zone, 
we  find  the  following  results  :  For  every  forty  votes  cast  in  them  for 
FREMONT,  BUCHANAN  had,  in  Vermont,  11;  in  Massachusetts,  15; 
in  northern  Illinois,  16;  in  northern  Ohio,  22;  in  Maine,  23;  in 
northern  Pennsylvania,  25;  in  New  York,  28;  in  Michigan,  29;  in 
northern  Indiana,  32.  These  proportions,  it  strikes  us,  indicate  the 
political  sympathies  of  the  people  among  whom  they  occur  to  be 
closely  connected  with  their  respective  nativities ;  and  we  may  here 
state  that  the  rule  holds  as  well  of  the  people  of  the  north-central 
zone  where  the  institutions  are  very  similar  to  those  of  their 
northern  sister  States,  and  yet  their  political  biases  are  as  distinct 
and  different  as  if  they  were  separated  from  each  other  by  some  cause 
of  quarrel  or  opposition  of  interests. 

We  confess  that  we  are  greatly  surprised  to  find  geographical  and 
climatic  lines  running  through  the  politics  of  our  people  with  so 
near  an  approach  to  mathematical  accuracy  as  our  figures  have 
shown  us ;  but  we  can  see  no  error  in  the  process  by  which  these  re 
markable  results  are  arrived  at.  The  subject  is  a  study  for  the 
curious  and  capable.  Our  data  are  not  all  given,  nor,  it  may  be,  are 
they  quite  clearly  presented,  but  we  submit  the  statement  in  the 
confidence  that  it  is  substantially  correct.  The  practical  inferences 
remain  to  be  drawn,  which  can  now  be  very  briefly  given : 

The  popular  vote  of  the  north  zone  in  1850  (making  the  necessary  de 
ductions  and  additions,  to  adjust  the  returns  of  the  States  to  the  lines  which 
cut  them)  was 1,625,913 

The  popular  vote  of  the  south  zone 404,151 

Do  do          south-central 715,766 

Together 1,119,917 

Plurality  of  north  over  south  and  south-central 505,996 

The  popular  vote  of  the  north-central  zone  (making  the  neces 
sary  additions  and  subtractions) ! 1,341,862 

Balance  of  power  in  popular  votes  in  the  north-central,  as  between 

the  north  zone  and  the  south  and  south-central 835,896 


342  APPENDIX. 

In  the  electoral  college  these  several  regions  stand  thils  : 

NORTH  ZONE — Maine  8,  New  Hampshire  5.  Vermont  5.  Con 
necticut  6;  Rhode  Island  4,  Massachusetts'  13.  New  York  35, 
Michigan  6,  Wisconsin,  5,  Iowa  4,  Minnesota  4 — making  95  elect 
oral  votes. 

SOUTH  ZONE — South  Carolina  8,  Georgia  10.  Alabama  9,  Missis 
sippi  7,  Arkansas  4.  Louisiana  6,  Texas  4,  Florida  3 — 51  electors. 

SOUTH-CENTRAL  ZONE — Delaware  3,  Maryland  8.  Virginia  15, 
North  Carolina  10,  Kentucky  12,  Tennessee  12 — 60  electors. 

NORTH-CENTRAL  ZONE — New  Jersey  7,  Pennsylvania  27,  Ohio 
23,  Indiana  13,  Illinois  11,  Missouri  9,  California  4 — 94  electors. 

This  geographic  division  puts  the  balance  thus :  The  south  and 
south-central  against  the  north  zone,  111  electors  against  95 — or  a 
plurality  of  16.  But  Ohio  voting  out  of  geographic  order,  gives  to 
the  north  a  majority  of  7. 

The  north-central  zone  has  94  votes  when  Ohio  is  in  line,  71 
•without  her — leaving  a  clear  majority  of  64  to  determine  the  issue 
between  the  extremists  who  lie  upon  her  north  and  south  borders. 

Now,  if  this  doctrine  of  climatic  and  political  sympathy  holds 
good  in  logic  and  in  experience,  Pennsylvania's  position  in  the  re 
gion  that  rules  the  Union  is  demonstrated  and  accounted  for ;  and  it 
is  presumed  that  the  National  Conventions  of  the  coming  Presi 
dential  campaign  will  consider  the  subject,  and  provide  for  the 
struggle  with  reference  to  it. 

Whoever  will  look  carefully  for  the  reason  of  dividing  the  south- 
central  from  the  more  southern  slave  States,  may  find  it  in  their 
past  history,  and  in  the  clear  indications  of  their  future  destiny. 

This  subject  invites  further  observations.  It  has  its  range  through 
the  whole  field  of  ethnological  science  and  of  civil  history. 

W.  E. 

P.  S.  For  the  geographic  and  climatic  distribution  of  the  secret 
Orders  of  the  United  States,  see  ante  pp.  268,  269,  271,  277; 
and,  of  the  Cooperative  Unions  in  England  and  Prussia,  see  pp. 
300,  306,  and  308 ;  noting  the  fact  that  the  region  in  the  United 
States  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  between  39°  and  42°  of  north 
latitude  lies  in  the  same  belt  of  mean  annual  temperature  as  Prussia 
and  England — another  curious  example  of  the  coincidence  of  cli 
matic  conditions  with  societary  movements. 


INDEX 


ACTIVITY  of  the  vital  organs,  law  of  distribution  of 79 

A d  valorems,  mischiefs  of  in  tariff  of  1846 201 

Ad  valorems,  rule  of  taxation,  alien  and  hostile  to  the  principle  of 

protection 200 

vices  of 210 

Affinities  result  from  differences,  and  in  the  ratio  of  their  number 10 

African  negroes,  not  savage 28 

Africa,  savage 26 

Africans,  residence  of,  in  the  United  States  explained 35 

Agricultural  industry,  exclusive,  exposed  to  famines 59 

Agricultural  production,  advance  of,  limited 57 

Agricultural  production  of  France,  doubled  in  thirty  years 48 

Agriculture  combined  with  cooperative  stores 310 

Agriculture  in  its  infancy  benefited  by  trade  with  manufacturing 

countries 178 

Agriculture,  unmixed,  cannot  organize  industry 217 

Agriculturists,  American,  two  classes,  broadly  different — farmers  and 

planters ;  farmers  export  but  two  and  one-half  per  cent  of  their 

product,  planters  export  seventy-five  per  cent  of  theirs , 181 

Almsgiving  changed  from  a  charity  to  a  debt 201 

America,  European  colonization  of 26 

American  manufactures  sheltered  by  the  War  of  the  Revolution 194 

Analogies  forced  upon  things  not  analogous 74 

Analogy  of  savage  society  to  individual  infancy 18 

of  patriarchism  to  childhood 20 

of  barbarism  to  youth 23 

of  civilization  to  manhood 24 

Anno  Domini  1776 25-3 

Annual  production  in  U.  S.,  value  of 169 

Anti-slavery,  history  of 253 

A  posteriori  method,  the  vice  of  metaphysics  and  of  political  economy...  76 

343 


344  INDEX. 

A  posteriori  reasoning  fails,  where  the  focal  point  of  facts  falls  outside 

of  observation  and  experiment 76 

A  posteriori,  the  system  of,  is  capable  only  of  unmixed  materialism,  and 
has  never  had  any  success  in  subjects  whose  life 'is  joined  with 

liberty 76 

Arts  and  sciences,  not  the  distinctive  glory  of  the  last  centenary 252 

Asia  barbaric 46 

Association  and  individuality,  their  necessity 9 

their  physical  analogues 10 

counter-balance  and  corroborate  each  other 10 

Association  freed  and  restored 251 

Association  in  bondage — in  freedom 260 

Association,  stages  in  the  growth  of 260 

Association  without  freedom  is  domination,  not  commerce 164 

B 

Balance,  broken,  of  Europe  being  rectified 37 

"Balance  of  trade"  not  in  difference  of  values  but  of  kinds  of  trade 171 

Bank  circulation  exposes  the  banks  to  runs 147 

Bank  circulation  never  in  excess  except  under  free  trade 200 

Bank  currency,  inflation  of,  clue  to  excess  of  imports 200 

Bank  note  as  a  traveler 144 

Bank  notes 143 

the  money  of  the  common  people 144 

Banknotes,  their  service  outweighs  their  faults  146 

Bank  of  Amsterdam,  history  and  service  of 139 

Bank  of  England,  charter  of,  a  failure 150,  155 

Banker's  certificates  of  deposit  multiply  the  service  of  money 135 

Banks  of  deposit  as  early  as  the  Christian  era 135 

collect  and  employ  idle  money 138 

sources  of  profit  and  credit '. 141 

instances 142 

their  service 138 

Banks  distribution  of,  in  Scotland  and  United  States 152 

number  and  localities  of,  required 151 

Banks  of  circulation  may  lend  twice  their  capital  and  one-third  of  their 

deposits..., 148 

Banks  of  deposit,  discount  and  issue 133 

Banks,  rule  for  distribution  of 151 

Banking  business,  elements  of 142 

benefits  of 142 

order  of  development 149 

transfers  the  property  in  coins 139 

Banking  should  be  as  free  as  any  other  business 154 

Banking  system,  indispensable 151 


INDEX.  345 

Bastiat  on  competition 175,  828 

Barbarism  a  great  advance  upon  the  previous  forms  of  society; .  Moors 

and  Mahometans  of  the  Middle  Ages,  superior  in  all  things  to  the 

contemporaneous  civilization  of  the  Caucasian  family 20 

Barbarism  and  civilization,  distinctive  characteristics  of 22 

Barbarism  culminates  in  the  youth  of  manhood.* 27 

Barter,  the  type  of  a  true  commerce 109 

Belgian  tariff,  eminently  protective 240 

protects  her  shipping 240 

Belgium,  growth  of  population  in 241 

Belgium,  territory,  population,  manufactures,  agriculture,  commerce...  230 

Beneficial  societies  among  colored  women 279 

Beneficial  societies,  easy  rates  of  insurance,  liberal  reliefs,  and  moral 

influence — they  grow  rich. 203 

Beneficial  societies  in  England,  extent  of 2G2 

Beneficial  societies  in  the  United  States 202 

Berlin  and  Milan  decrees 192 

Bible,  tract,  and  missionary  societies  of  the  age 253 

Bonaparte,  Napoleon,  on  Political  Economy 191 

Bonuses  and  countervailing  duties... 205 

Books  and  newspapers  published  in  1800 255 

Boot  and  shoe  factory,  Bay  State 319 

Borders  of  Asia  and  Africa,  stationary 27 

British  demand  for  our  provisions — quantities  and  prices 184 

British  Economists,  fundamental  errors  of 150 

British  navigation  laws 194 

British  policy  of  trade  and  doctrine 179 

Brougham  would  crush  all  foreign  manufactures  in  the  cradle 192 

Building  and  loan  associations,  history  of 322 

great  progress  in  Philadelphia,  principles,  profit  of 323 

Building  associations 284 

Business  functions,  three  classes  of 290 

Business  policy,  stages  in  development  of 280 

C 

Calhoun,  Clay,  in  1833 199 

Capital  and  labor,  harmony  of. 325 

Capital,  association  of,  in  various  forms 283 

Capital,  definition  of 40 

Capital,  finds  a  motive,  in  its  interest,  to  afford  equitable  share  of  joint 

products  to  labor 88 

Capital  in  association 200 

Capital  in  civilized  labor 121 

Capital,  quantity  of,  and  quality  of  labor,  relation  of. 87 

23 


346  INDEX. 

Carey  and  Bastiat 87 

Carey's  law  of  distribution  of  wages  and  profits 08 

Carey,  H.  C.,  character  of  his  system 5,0 

Carey,  H.  C.,  law  of  climate 39,  331 

Carriage  factory  in  New  York t 320 

Cash  sales,  policy  and  principle  of 303 

Catallactics 103 

Census  estimates  of  wealth  in  U.  S.,  sources  of  error 50,  108 

Census  reports,   one-third  less    than   annual   products  in  the    United 

States 50 

Centuries,  the  last  five,  how  distinguished 252 

Charities  converted  into  equitable  claims 282 

Chatham,  Earl  of,  would  not  allow  the  colonies  to  make  a  hobnail 104 

Chemistry,  a  wonder-working  adjuvant  of  human  labor 50 

Christendom,  in  the  dark  ages 30 

Christian  knowledge,  spread  of  in  the  last  centenary  253 

Circulation,  effect  of  rapidity  of,  not  measurable  by  multipliers 137 

Circulation  of  money  and  of  the  blood,  in  what  respects  unlike 13(5 

Circulation,  rapidity  of  bears  relation  to  the   quantity  of  represented 

money 136 

Circulating  medium,  its  analogy  to  circulation  of  the  blood 130 

Civilization  and  liberty  rest  upon  credit 1-13 

Civilization,  defined  by  its  history  only 32 

Civilization,  distinctive  character  of 251 

Civilization,  elastic  and  composite 30 

Civilization,  late  development  of 30 

Civilization,  not  logically  defined 247 

difficulty  of  definition 247 

Civilization,  the  European  form  of  societary  life ..  20 

Civilized  races  of  Europe,  no  decay  of. 27 

Clearing  house,  payment  by  set-off 118 

Climate,  laws  of,  govern  human  migrations 34 

Climate  limits  science,  literature,  and  religions  35 

Climatic  belts,  three  in  North  America 38 

Climatic  law  determines  the  future  unions  of  States 38 

Climatic  laws,  prevent  permanent  domination  of  the  superior  races 36 

Climatic  law  rules  settlement  in  the  United  States 34,  331 

Climatic  law  in  party  politics 331 

Climatic    law    in    distribution    of    secret    societies,    and    cooperative 

unions 208,  269,  271.  277,  300,  300,  308,  and  note  342 

Clothing  and  lodging,  equivalents  of  artificial  heat 05 

Coal,  power  evolved 55 

Coal,  seven  tons  give  the  power  of  seventy  thousand  women  in  manu 
facturing „ 1 56 

Cobden,  on  Portugal  and  Turkey 246 


INDEX.  347 

Coinage,  changes  in  value  of,  since  the  eleventh  century 113 

Coinage  at,  British  and  American  mints  lid 

Colbert,  fosters  home  manufactures 205 

J.  B.  Say's  account  of  his  policy 241 

Colonization,  a  relief  of  suffering  during  ages  of  disorder C'2 

Color,  prejudice  of 279 

Colvvell,  Stephen 5 

Commerce 157 

faulty  definitions  of 158 

Commerce  and  trade,  distinctive  definition  of 100 

Commerce  is  immediateness  of  intercourse  and  exchange 165 

Commerce,  legitimate,  insures  supplies  to  the  oldest  countries 62 

Commerce  of  home 165 

might  suffice  for  the  United  States 165 

Commerce  of  savages 16 

Commodities,  value  of  in  exchange 124 

Communism  arises  from  fear  of  the  ill-distribution  of  wealth — a  mis 
take  and  a  failure '. 290 

Communism,  hostile  to  cooperation 313 

Communistic  opposition  to  cooperative  stores  in  Germany 307 

Compensations  and  substitutions  in  providential  provision 63 

Competition,  Bastiat  on 175,  328 

Competition  defeated  and  excluded  in  transportation 2,88 

Competition  of  underselling  avoided , 303 

Competition,  the  enemy  of  harmony 327 

Competition,  the  soul  and  centre  principle  of  free  trade 828 

Competition  versus  cooperation "^27 

Compromise,  act  of 199 

Comte,  on  the  stages  of  societary  development  and  their  correspond 
ence  to  those  of  individual  life,  note 24 

Consumers  are  also  producers 227 

Consumers,  every  ten  must  support  one  merchant 2(.)9 

Consumption  and  production  in  United  States 51 

Convertibility,  not  the  essence  of  the  bank  note 154 

Cooperation,  a  fully  rounded  system 297 

Cooperation  between  master  and  slaves  in  Louisiana 324 

Cooperation  in  Spain,  how  propagated 311 

Cooperation  in  the  United  States 315 

Coo'peration  in  the  whale  fisheries 324 

Cooperation,  in  the  United  States,  less  urgent  than  elsewhere 316 

Cooperation,  practicability  of 324 

Cooperation,  resisted  by  insurrectionary  spirit  of  Western  Europe 313 

Cooperation,  stores,  manufactories,  banks  295 

Cooperation  supplies  credit,  and  market  for1  products 310 

Cooperation,  survey  of  the  field 281 


348  INDEX. 

Cooperation,  the  system  of  agricultural  industry  in  Russia 312 

Cooperative  associations,  what  they  mean , 296 

Cooperative  foundery  at  Troy,  New  York,  great  success  of '. 318 

at  Somerset,  Massachusetts 319 

Cooperative  industrial  societies  in  United  States 318 

Cooperative  industry,  economy  of 318,321 

Cooperative  labor  societies,  definition  of 295,  296 

Cooperative  movement,  difference  of,  in  England  and  Germany 307 

Cooperative  store  in  Charleston 320 

Cooperative  stores,  dealings  with  members  and  non-members 300 

Cooperative  stores,  definition  of 295,290 

Cooperative  stores,  extension  of  in  England 305 

Cooperative  stores,  inexpensiveness  of 30-1 

Cooperative  stores  in  New  England 317 

Cooperative  stores  in  Pennsylvania 318 

Cooperative  stores,  practicability  of 298 

Cooperative  stores,  the  first  step  in  guarautyism , 297 

Cooperative  stores,  their  properties  and  uses 280 

Coordination  and  subordination  in  living  organisms 11 

Corn,  burnt  for  fuel  in  the  West 183 

Corporal  punishment  abolished 250 

Corporation,  legal,  its  meaning.  200 

Corporations,  moral  character  of 283 

Cotton  always  a  rebel 182 

Cotton  crop  under  slavery  policy 324 

Cotton  crop  of  1800,  quantity  and  value 181 

Cotton  manufacture,  how  protected  in  England 238 

Cotton,  rapid  decline  in  price  of 220 

Cottons,  consumption  of,  in  England 58 

Countervailing  duties  in  English  policy 239,  200 

Countervailing  duties,  not  protective  in  principle 200 

Credit,  abuses  of 143 

Credit,  a  Jacob's  ladder  of 309 

Credit  banks,  constitution  and  policy  of 308,  309 

statistics  of 309 

Credit  banking  system  in  Germany 290 

Credit,  how  provided  for  uupropertied  men 308 

Credit,  its  functions  and  power 140 

Credit  makes  capital  of  character 113 

Credit  modifies  the  money  demand 117 

Credit  system  must  enlarge  with  all  progress  in  society 150 

Credit,  the  broad  basis  of  civilized  business 149 

Crimes,  capital,  one  hundred  and  fifty  in  England;  diminution  of. 250 

Currency,   depreciated,   evils  of,  less  than  of   a  lack  of  the  uiouey 
supply , 155 


INDEX.  349 

Currier's  shop  in  Boston  320 

Curse,  the  primal,  has  a  promise  iu  it 7;} 


Death  rate,  greatest  in  the  least  dense  populations 72 

Death  rate  in  England,  France,  Prussia,  and  United  States 72 

Death  rate  iu  London  varied  in  one  hundred  years 72 

Debts  and  funds,  no  evil  in  decrease  of  value  of 130 

Definition  of  value 87 

Definition  of  wealth,  the  measure  of  man's  power  over  nature 41 

Definition  of  political  economy y 

Democracies  of  Greece,  faults  and  virtues  of 24'J 

Democracy,  the  polity  of  savages 17 

Deposits,  largely  consist  of  bank  loans 148 

Differences,  the  natural,  enough  for  foreign  commerce 223 

Differences,  unity  and  cooperation  of 31 

Discovery  in  natural  law,  followed  closely  by  practical  application 57 

Disease,  a  broken  balance  of  excitement 7U 

Dismal  school,  conflicting  theories  of 74 

Dispair,  theory  of,  grounded  in  disorders  of  society 74 

Distributive  law  of  inhabitation  of  the  earth 32 

Distribution  of  wealth,  laws  of , 87 

Diversification  of  industries,  the  aim  of  protection 215 

Diversification  of  pursuits  essential  to  the  welfare  of  society 12 

Division  of  labor,  benefits  of,  exaggerated 15',),  101 

Division  of  labor  doctrine,  abuse  of 327 

Division  of  labor,  territorial,  J.  11.  McCulloch 158 

Divisions  of  the  United  States — Jay  and  Hamilton 331 

Doctrine,  a  test  of 84 

Domestic  exchanges  in  1802,  estimated  value  of ]00 

Duty  paid  by  the  foreign  producer ...  .  220 

Duties,  protective,  who  pays  them  ? ". 225 

Duties  reflected  upon  domestic  prices,  absurdity  of. 230 

E 

Earth,  not  one-tenth  of  the,  fully  cultivated 5V) 

Economy  in  expenses,  leads  to  cooperation  in  production 305 

Edenism 14 

conditions  of  society  in 15 

Education,  as  a  counter-balance,  to  excessive  fertility 81 

Education  in  the  arts  repays  its  cost 227 

Eighteenth  century,  achievements  of 31 

Electricity  against  time 55 

Elements  of  matter,  man's  power  over 50 

England  begins  to  advance  in  the  fourteenth  century 30 


350  INDEX. 

England  draws  from  foreign  raw  material  four-fifths  of  her  exports.....     61 

England,  history  of  protection  in  .................................................  236 

woolens  .................................................  .........................   237 

iron  ..............................................................................   237 

wool,  iron  and  coal,  protection  of  cottons  ...............................  238 

England  needs  customers  and  feeders  on  cheap  wages  ..............  .  ......   179 

England  our  only  European  provision  market  .................................   184 

England,  supplements  her  natural  labor  power  by  steam  force  equal  to 

one-fourth  the  inhabitants  of  the  globe  .....................................     55 

England,  the  world's  debt  to  ........................................................     OS 

England  would  crush  foreign  manufactures  in  the  cradle  ............   192,  1*>3 

England's  foreign  policy  of  trade,  change  of  ...................................   103 

England's  sanguinary  protective  laws  .....................................  237,  238 

England's  war  upon  foreign  manufactures  ...............................   11)2,  103 

English  Colonies,  growing  independence,  and  industrial  emancipation  of    88 
English  domination  in  the  world's  markets,  end  of  ..........................     88 

English  manufactures,  foreign  materials,  wages,  and  profit  of  ...........     61 

English  protective  duties  never  repealed  till  they  were  useless  .........   239 

Engineers,  iudefiuiteness  of  the  term  .......................................  .....  292 

Equivalence  of  money  to  values  in  exchange,  unfounded...  .............   115 

Era,  new,  in  manufacturing  industry,  why  fixed  in  1814  ...................     99 

Era,  the  new,  in  civilization  begun  a  hundred  years  ago  ....................   218 

Europe  and  the  United  States  increase  their  labor-power  six  times  by 

the  aid  of  coal  .....................................................................     55 

European  people  only  have  passed  through  all  the  stages  of  society, 

and  show  no  signs  of  declension  ...............................................     27 

European  races,  their  work  of  three  or  four  hundred  years  .....  ..  .........     31 

Europe,  stable  goverments  organized  in,  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries     31 
Evil  is  inverted  good  ..........  .......................................................   143 

Excessive  activity  of  one  organ  at  the  expense  of  others  ....................     79 

Excess  of  life  supplies  its  waste  ...................................................     42 

Exceptions  do  not  prove  the  rule*.  .................................................     83 

Exchange  the  great  disturber  of  cooperation  ...................................   297 

Exchanges,  the  life  of  man,  a  round  of  ............................................   107 

Experience,  not  always  directory  ..................................................     29 

Extension  of  average  lifetime  in  the  present  century  ........................     64 

Exports,  American,  coarse  and  low-priced  ............................  .........  183 

Exports  of  England,  value  of  domestic  and  foreign  materials  ..............     61 

Exports  of  manufactures  to  agricultural  nations  ..............................   187 

Exports  to  manufacturing  and  non-manufacturing  .nations,  relative 

value  of  ..........................  ...............................  ...................     187 


Faculties,  human,  do  not  spring  from  suffering  ...............................      16 

Faith-force  above  fact-force...  .............................................   140 


INDEX.  351 

Faith,  like  the  mechanical  powers,  multiplies  force  miraculously 140 

Faith  sustains  hope  and  charity 60 

Famines  in  Ireland  and  India  explained 51) 

Famine  in  Northeast  Prussia  50 

Famines  in  the  earlier  ages,  frequent 58 

Famines  and  plagues  disappear  as  population  increases 58 

Famines,  remedy  for 50 

Famines,  their  frequency  in  modern  India 245 

Farmers'  question,  the 177 

Fasting  commanded,  the 12 

Facts  do  not  always  indicate  laws 48 

Federal  Government  adapted  to  differences  in  union 88 

Federal  Union  of  the  United  States,  the  model  of  nationalities  37 

"Federalist;"  Jay  and  Hamilton 881 

Fertility,  human,  contradictory  theories  of 74 

Fertility  of  the  soil,  not  exhausted  by  right  cultivation 00 

Feudalism  allied  to  barbarism 80 

Feudalism,  association  in  bondage 818 

Figures  in  statistics  need  rectification  by  facts 100 

First  free  list  in  tariff  act 100 

First  pair,  the,  provision  for 15 

conditions  of  Edenic  Society 15 

Flanders  and  Toulouse  two  centuries  in  advance  of  England  in  manu 
facturing  industry 80 

Flax  and  cotton,  supplement  and  displace  wool G5 

Food  and  life,  possible  quantities  of,  unknown  and  indifferent 75 

Food  and  population  disproportioned  according  to  Malthus 58 

Food,  human,  demanded,  limited  like  the  product 58 

Food,  increase  of,  in  France CO 

Food  of  men,  vegetable  cheaper  and  more  abundant  than  animal 05 

Food  of  the  common  people  at  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 02 

Food,  prices  of,  remain  nearly  stationary,  why 120 

Food  of  the  inferior  animals,  vegetable  against  animal 05 

Food,  provision  of,  adequate , 50 

Food,  supply  of  France,  increase  of 48 

Force  and  speed  required  in  subjugation  of  nature 54 

Foreign  imports  crush  domestic  manufactures 105 

Foreign  trade  of  United  States  in  1800  analyzed 180 

exports  seven-eighths  raw  and  one-eighth  manufactures 180 

Formation  of  society 14 

Fortunes,  private,  immense  growth  of 201 

France  excludes  manufactures,  growth  of  trade  in 215 

France,  density  of  population  in 48 

France,  growth  of  production  one  hundred  and  thirty-one  per  cent  in 

twenty  years 47 


352  INDEX. 

France,  increase  of  food  in GO 

France,  increase  of  food  production f. 48 

France  outstrips  England  in  rate  of  increase  of  wealth 47 

France,  success  of  protection  in 241 

Freedmen  hanged  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII 29 

Freedmen,  their  prospects  in  the  new  order  of  industry 99 

Freedom  must  be  surrendered  by  those  who  refuse  it 329 

Free  foreign  trade,  no  such  thing  rightly  exists 175 

Free  Masons 204 

Free-trade  abuse  of  the  maxims  of  liberty 225 

Free  trade,  British,  its  character 239 

Free  trade  driven  to  tax  only  the  goods  we  cannot  produce 2?>2 

Free  trade  in  the  historic  nations 212 

Free  trade  in  Turkey,  Ireland,  India,  Portugal 243,  244,  245,  24G 

Free-trade  period  1833  to  1841,  mischiefs  of,  repaired  by   tariff  of 

1842 205 

Free-trade  philanthropists 220 

Free- trade  policy,  its  preposterous  consequences 233 

Free  trade  suited  to  savages 177 

Free-trade  truisms  are  nothing  in  the  dispute 224,  225 

French  communism,  principles  of 314 

Free  traders,  description  of 215 

G 

Galvanism,  electricity,  electric  telegraph,  dates  of 57 

Gas  from  water  in  expectation OS 

German  lodges  of  United  Mechanics. 278 

Germany,  cooperative  stores  in 300 

difference  of  origin,  and  movement 300 

Godwin,  Parke,  acknowledgment  to 0 

Gold  and  silver,  differ  from  paper  money 115 

Gold  and  silver  money  does  not  by  its  quantity  depreciate 115 

Gold,  premium  on 150 

Goldsmiths,  the  deposit  bankers  as  lately  as  1601 135 

Golden  age 15 

Good  Samaritans,  admit  women  and  colored  people 280 

Government  cannot  administer  a  general  system  of  banking 153 

Governmental  changes  of  the  future,  to  be  internal  reforms 37 

Government,  best,  definition  of 225 

Government,  limitation  of  the  powers  of 222 

Grain  and  provision  market  in  England,  our  share  of 184 

Grant,  General,  on  farmers'  foreign  market 189 

Grant,  President,  on  our  foreign  food  market ~ 183 

Greeley,  Horace,  acknowledgments  to 0 

Greenbacks,  popularity  of 153 


INDEX.  353 

Grounds  of  popular  error  in  respect  to  relation  of  man  and  food 4H 

Growth  of  wealth  in  the  most  recent  decades,  ln\v  of 52 

Guaranty  associations,  three  classes  of 281 

Ouaranlyism 04. 7 

Guarantyism,  an  effort  at  free  association ..  251 

Gulf  States,  the  Southern  zone 88 

H 

Hamilton,  Alexander 0 

report  on  manufactures 195 

Handicraft  answers  to  science  in  effecting  uses 57 

Hands  employed  in  mining,  manufacturing,  and  mechanic  arts  in  1800     93 

Harmony  of  interests  of  laborer  and  capitalist 98 

History,  the  habit  of,  broken  in  the  United  States 29 

Home  commerce  and  foreign  trade,  relative  value  of 105 

Home  markets  for  agricultural  products 18;J 

Home  market,  the  farmers' 180 

Horde,  formation  of  the *t     10 

Horses,  price  of  in  1096 <e  H2 

Human   progress,  in   economics,   tending   over  to   better  and  cheaper 

supplies (;,j 

Human  fertility  not  a  constant  quantity 42 

Humholdt's  estimate  of  increase  of  metallic  money IK; 

Hume  ami  Mill  on  effect  of  increase  of  money 123 

Hume,  on  stimulus  of  money !•_>! 

Husbandry  always  loyal 182 

I 

Imponderables,  the  latest  subjects  of  human  dominion 07 

Imports,  economic  value  of 170 

Imports,  kinds  of,  from  Western  Europe 171 

per  capita  under  the  free  trade  and  protection  tariffs...., 202 

proportion  of,  legitimate  subjects  of  trade 170 

proporlion  of,  ready  for  consumption 170 

small  value  of,  to  domestic  transporters 109 

Imprisonment  for  debt,  abolished 250 

Improvements  in  changes  of  form  and  place 108 

Improvements  in  travel,  transportation,  and  production 04 

India,  British  residentsin 34 

British  rule  in,  history  of  her  trade  and  decadence 245 

impoverished  by  cost  of  transportation 108 

in  advance  of  England  in  the  fourteenth  century  30 

Indian,  American,  population,  spareeness  of  in  time  of  Wm.  I'enn 04 

Indian  tribes,  infertility  of,  explained 82 

Indians,  American,  a  degenerate  race 18 

2i 


354  INDEX. 

Individualism  giving  way  to  association 251 

Inductive  reasoning,  its  limits  in  natural  science 76 

Industries,  diversified,  sure  defense  against  famine 59 

Industries  of  savage  tribes,  but  little  diversified 16 

Inebriate  asylums 273 

Inhabitation,  slight  modifications  of  the  law  of 33 

Innovations  in  productive  labor,  false  alarms  of 96 

Insurance  in  the  State  of  New  York,  statistics  of 257 

Insurance,  life,  property,  and  maritime 257 

Interest,  difference  between  small  and  large  capitals 285 

Interest,  money  at,  a  hireling — interest,  or  profits? 284 

International  labor  league,  opposed  to  cooperation 328 

Inventions  and  discoveries  of  fifteenth  century 31 

Ireland,  English  policy  of  extermination  avowed 244 

Ireland,  history  of  her  manufactures 244 

Iron,  English,  prices  as  affected  by  varied  tariff  rut  eg 228 

Iron,  English  prices  of,  fluctuations  in 100 

Iron  of  England,  not  one-eighth  of  her  total  exports 61 

Iron,  protection  of,  in  English  policy 100 

Isothermal  line  of  Mahommetan  conquests 34 

Israel  goes  into  slavery  for  a  supply  of  corn 65 

J 

Jackson,  General,  on  farmer's  foreign  market 188 

K 

Knights  of  Pythias,  German  lodges 272 

Knights  of  Pythias,   origin,   members,  rate   of  growth,  proportion   of 

reliefs  to  receipts,  law  of  climate 270 

constitution,  provision  for  casualties,  trivial  expenses 271 

Knights  of  St.  Crispin,  their  cooperative  stores 317 

L 

Labor  and  capital,  marriage  of. 293 

Labor  and  capital,  respective  gains  from  increased  productiveness 97 

Labor,  artificial,  substituted  for  natural 63 

Labor,  choice  in  kinds  of,  how  determined 216 

Labor  cost  of  gold  and  silver,  difficult  of  estimation 114 

Labor  is  capital 121 

Labor  and  money,  yokefellows  in  production 121 

Labor  is  capital,  but  is  usually  treated  as  an  associate 40 

Labor,  its  improved  forms,  promise  to  secure  adjustment  of  life  to  food     81 

Labor,  its  kinds  and  varied  rewards 216 

Labor,  its  repugnance  to  association 26,  283 

Labor,  more  and  more  demanded  as  supplies  are  drawn  successively 
from  the  vegetable  and  mineral  world 66 


INDEX.  355 

Labor-power  measured  by  its  actual  products 50 

Labor,  skilled  and  unskilled 172 

Labor  remitted  from  low  to  high-priced  work 90 

Labor,  rise  in  wages  of,  since  abolition  of  villenage 90 

Labor  unions,  difficulties  and  drift 330 

Labor  unions,  do  not  aim  to  abolish  the  wages  system 329 

Labor  unions,  their  universal  prevalence,  their  justification;  their  policy 

requires  a  radical  change 320 

Labor,  unskilled,  favorable  to  fecundity 83 

Labor  value,  Mr.  Carey 87 

Labor,  value  of,  is  the  cost  of  its  education  and  training 90 

Labor  value,  tendency  of,  the  law  of,  to  equity  in  the  distribution  of 

wealth 88 

Laborer,  the,  what  he  is  in  the  system  of  production 292 

Laborers,  general  improvement  in  their  condition 102 

Laborers,  their  better  condition  in  United  States 310,  317 

Laissez  faire 223,  224 

Land  and  labor,  only  increase  in  value  in  progressive  conditions.  89 

Land  and  labor,  why  their  value  increases 131 

Land  in  itself  valueless 120 

Land,  value  of,  is  the  cost  of  its  improvement 90 

Laws  of  nature  tend  to  adjustment,  of  man  and  earth 00 

Laws  of  nature  vindicate  themselves 00 

Lead,  price  rises  as  the  duty  falls 229 

Libraries  in  the  United  States 255 

Life,  extension  of,  in  the  present  century 02 

Life,  reproduction  of,  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  power  of  maintaining  it..     77 
Life,  term  of,  lengthens,  and  fecundity  diminishes,  with  improvement 

of  the  human  race 78 

Life,  waste  of,  due  to  preponderance  of  the  animal  passions 83 

Life,  waste  of,  not  a  blunder  of  the  Creator 83 

List,  Frederick,  II.  C.  Carey  and  Stephen  Colwell 5 

Luxuries,  not  to  be  taxed  as  such 208 

M 

Macaulay,  on  bankers  of  the  17th  century 135 

Macaulay,  on  wages  in  England 91 

Machinery,  against  weight  and  space 55 

Machinery   becomes    bone   and   muscle   to    the  brain  and  nerves   of 

science 57 

Machinery,  ignorance  scared  by,  as  horses  are  at  locomotives -03 

Machinery,  its  velocity  in  work 50 

Madison,  on  causes  that  induced  the  Federal  Union 190 

Malthus'  corrective  checks 42 

Mai  thus1  doctrine  of  disproportion  of  food  to  population 58 


356  INDEX. 

Malthus'  formula  of  disproportion  of  food  to  population 42 

Man,  a,  the  type  of  a  society 11 

Man,  not  prices,  the  leading  consideration  in  trade 179 

Man  regarded  as  a  beast,  not  a  safe  basis  for  a  philosophy  of  his  rela 
tions  and  destiny 74 

Mankind,  collective,  cosmopolitan,  but  the  several  families  are  bounded 

by  their  natal  latitudes 33 

Man's  adjustment  to  his  conditions,  not  a  question  of  numerals,  but  of 

principles 75 

Man's  nature  and  destiny,  philosophy  of,  rests  on  final  causes 75 

Manufactures,  cheapen  faster  than  the  precious  metals 114 

Manufactures,  Hamilton's  report  on,  in  1791,  great  progress  in 195 

Manufactures,  household,  destroyed  after  peace  of  1783 195 

Manufacturing  industry,  new  Era  of,  begins  in  1814 99 

Masses  of  matter,  man's  power  over 5(5 

Materalism  in  science -51 

Material  interests  become  social  virtues 201 

McCulloch  and  followers,  their  general  maxim  of  trade  falsified 214 

McCulloch  on  territorial  division  of  labor 158 

McCulloch's  doctrine  of  disproportion  of  man  and  food 43 

Mediterranean  border  lauds,  exceptional  races  of. 26 

Merchant,  a  producer,  the  besetting  sin 

Merchant  class  supported  by  the  consumers 298 

Metallic  money,  estimated  increase  of 110 

Metallic  money,  faults  of 150 

Metals,  precious,  effects  of  vast  increase  of. 131 

Metals,  the  precious,  their  qualities 110 

Mexico,  Cuba,  and  Spain,  in  the  same  belt  of  temperature 34 

Middlemen,  merchants,  history  and  functions  of 

Middle  States,  east  and  west,  the  middle  zone 

MIGRATION  AND  OCCUPATION  OF  THE  EARTH 

Military  system  reformed ......  251 

Mill  bases  his  theory  of  political  economy  upon  despair 45 

Mill,  corroborates  Malthus 44 

hopeless  even  of  emigration  as  a  remedy 

Mill,  John  Stewart,  scare  at  the  exhaustion  of  English  coal 03 

Mill,  population  must  overgrow  provision  of  food 45 

Millionaires'  insignificance  to  the  wealth  of  the  millions .  291 

Mill's  equivalence  of  money  to  values  exchanged 123 

Mineral  kingdom,  order  of  human  control  of 

Money,  a  medium  of  exchange,  but  not  a  standard  of  value 90 

Money  as  a  producer  of  values —  120 

stimulous  of  its  influx '. 121 

Money  as  an  exchanger  of  values 106 

Money  by  excess  cannot  overstimulate  industry 137 


INDEX.  357 

Money,  change  in  the  value  of,  since  time  of  Henry  VIII  ..................  112 

Money  demand  affected  by  the  credit  system..  .................................  117 

Money  early  goes  into  association  .................................................  283 

Money,  effect  of  abundance  and  scarcity  of  ....................................  124 

Money,  equivalence  of  to  value  of  commodities  in  exchange  ..............  115 

Money,  fallacy  of  the  doctrine  that  it  is  only  an  exchanger  ................  129 

Money  in  circulation,  amount  prior  to  1800  ....................................  123 

Money  increase,  effects  of  ............................................................  128 

Money,  par  value  of,  delined  .........................................................  128 

Money,  increase  of,  cheapens  commodities  faster  than  its  own  exchange 

value  declines  ......................................................................  131 

Money,  increase  of,  effect  upon  value  of  debts  .................................  130 

Money,  its  essential  property  is  in  its  convenience  ...........................  151 

Money,  ils  value  is  its  labor  cost  ...................................  ...............  129 

IN  I  on  ey  -lenders  or  partners  ...........................................................  284 

Money,  metallic,  without  credit,  is  alow  stage  of  barbaric  barter  .......  135 

Money  measured  by  its  exchange  equivalence  .................................  91 

Money,  mystery  of  .....................................................................  15(5 

Money,  not  a  standard  of  value,  but  of  payment  ..............................  112 

Money  is  not  dead  capital  ...........................................................  122 

Money,  not  the  eqrmr^alent  of  total  exchanges  .................................  123 

Money  of  account,  dispenisetPwith  the  money  medium  .......................  118 

Money  of  account,  its  equivalence  to  values  in  exchange  ...................  129 

Money  of  all  kinds,  of  East  Indies,  American  Indians  ......................  109 

Money,  substantial,  subject  to  the  same  law  as  other  commodities  .......  137 

Money,  supply  of,  not  limited  as  in  the  case  of  food  .........................  117 

Money,  there  never  has  been  enough  of  it  ......................................  ]30 

Money,  use  of,  diminishing  relatively  in  England  .............................  118 

Money  values,  not  the  directory  in  international  trade  .......................  172 

Monopolies,  how  fostered,  and  their  overthrow  ................................  290 

Moors  superior  to  the  Caucasian  Spaniards  in  the  thirteenth  and  four 

teen  th  cent  uries  ....................................................................  30 

Moral  improvement  in  restraint  of  fecundity  ..................................  81 

Morals,  dependence  of,  upon  industrial  freedom  ..............................  12 

Mortality  of  the  race  in  disordered  conditions,  extremely  great  .........  78 


Napoleon,  on  political  economy  ....................................................   191 

Napoleon's  popular  loan  ..............................................................  326 

National  banks,  amount  of  deposits  ...............................................  259 

National  bank  notes,  amount  in  circulation  ....................................   145 

National  banking  system,  requires  amendment  ................................   153 

National  debt,  how  paid  off  .........................................................   200 

Nativities  of  people  of  the  United  States  .........................................     35 

Natural  laws,  adjustment  of,  to  vai'ied  conditions  .............................     43 


358  INDEX. 

Nature  has  not  the  compound  pulley,  the  screw,  or  the  wheel  and  axle  54 

Nature  in  rebellion  against  human  authority 1G 

Nature's  resistance  to  man's  control 54 

Negroes  in  the  childhood  of  the  race 28 

Negroes  not  to  be  judged  by  the  present  standard  of  rank 28 

Negroes,  the  ballot  their  defense 219 

only  skilled  labor  can  really  emancipate  them 220 

Negroes,  women  and  foreigners,  excluded  from  0.  U.  A.  M 278 

Nervous,  and  reproductive  systems,  antagonists 79 

Nervous  system,  relations  of,  to  viability 78 

Net  profits,  per  centage  of,  defect  in  principle  and  policy 320 

New  England  and  Canada,  the  northern  zone 38 

Newspapers  and  books  published  in  I860 255 

Nineteenth  century,  prospects  and  promise  of 31 

Notes,  in  the  rebellion,  the  only  American  money 147 

Notes  issued  by  government 145 

amount  issued 145 

Notes  of  the  Federal  Government,  the  work  done  by 140 

O 

Occupancy  of  unlike  climates  merely  military  and  commercial 31 

Odd  Fellows,  geographic  distribution  of,  law  of  climate 208 

Odd  Fellows,  proportion  of,  to  the  voters  of  the  Union 209 

Odd  Fellows,  political  importance  of,  amount  of  funds 270 

Odd  Fellows,  origin,  success — negroes  and  women  excluded  ;  Rebekah 

degree,  a  female  collateral  branch 265 

Odd  Fellows,  statistics  of  the  Order 267 

expense  of  membership  ;  rate  of  growth  ;  death  rate  of 267 

suspensions  and  expulsions  ;  otfenses  of  expelled  members 208 

Offences,  capital,  number  in  England,  diminution  of 256 

Opinion,  force  of,  in  fixing  wages 96 

Order,  laws  of,  work  through  disorder 293 

Order  of  life,  a  true,  will  secure  abundance 84 

Order  of  society,  the  true,  delivers  from  evil 12 

Orders,  the  order  of  the  day 280 

Organization,  implies  diversity  in  agreement 28 

Organization  of  differences 217 

Overtrading  in  foreign  imports,  only,  injures  the  national  finances 201 

Over-population  theory,  protest  of  philosophy  and  philanthrophy 73 

P 

Paper  money 133 

Taper  money,  depreciation  of 115 

Participation  in  profits  as  extra  wages 320,  321 

Palriarchism,  an   unchecked   despotism,  and   the   type  of  all   known 
despotisms 19 


INDEX.  359 

Patriarchism,  the  family  rule  viciously  extended 249 

productive  industry  begins  ;  property  in  the  soil;  money;  com 
merce  initiated;  slavery  of  men  and  women,  worse  than 
the  chattel  slavery  of  modern  times,  and  less  favorable  than 

barbaric  bondage 23 

Pauperism,  provision  for 255 

People,  the,  safe  against  their  oppressors 292 

Periodical  literature,  growth  of  in  ten  years 255 

Perry,  professor,  his  labor  market 328 

Pennsylvania's  political  economists 5 

Pennsylvania,  represeutative  State  of  the  Union 4 

Petroleum  replaces  turpentine 63 

Philosophy,  the  inductive,  compelled  to  assume  provision  of  means  for 

expectant  ends 7-5 

Political  Economy,  answers  none  of  the  demands  of  business 174 

Political  Economy,  Daniel  Webster  and  Napoleon,  on 191 

Political  Economy,  definition  of 9 

subj  ects  of 9 

Political  Economy  has  not  yet  cut  its  wisdom  teeth G2 

Political  Economy  lacks  the  characteristics  of  a  science 2{J7 

Political  Economy,  limits  of  its  province;  moral,  political,  and  religious 

relat  ions  of : 11 

Political  Economy,  national  as  opposed  to  cosmopolitan 174,  177 

Political  Economy,  its  doctrines  must  vary  with  conditions 177 

Political  Economy,  vicious  generalizations  of 32 

Political  Economy,  Whately's,  definition  of — Carey's 103 

Political  unions,  accommodate  specialties  of  the  various  races 37 

Population  and  products  of  France 47 

Population,  annual  products  and  distributive  average  shares  in  United 

States,  France,  and  Great  Britain 52 

Population,  density  of,  in  Europe  and  America 67 

Population,  density  of,  in  Great  Britain 49 

Population,  density  of,  in  Middle  States  compared  with  that  of  France     48 

Populations,  enormous,  of  antiquity 78 

Population,  law  of  increase ,     71 

rate  of  increase  in  the  United  States  ;   in  Great  Britain,  Prussia, 

and  France 71 

Popular  loan  in  United  States 325 

Population  of  British  West  Indies 34 

Population  of  Europe,  but  sixty-five  to  the  square  mile G2 

Population  of  the  United  States,  doubles  in  twenty-three  and  one-half 

years;  wealth  in  eight  and  one-half  years 49 

Population,  room  enough  in  Europe  and  America  for  nineteen  times 

their  present  number ...     62 

Population,  self-regulative 83 


360  INDEX. 

Population,  \aried  rate  of  increase  of,  in  nationalities  nearly  alike 71 

Portugal,  free  trade  in,  and  results 245 

Potatoes,  in  France 48 

Poverty,  not  commended  by  the  Great  Teacher 12 

Precious  metals,  value  of,  is  the  cost  of  their  production 114 

Price,  selling,  of  no  consequence  in  cooperative  stores 303 

Prices  at  New  York,  not  raised  by  influx  of  money 115 

Prices,  causes  affecting 101 

Prices,  decline  of,  since  1817  ;   and  from  1855  to  1860 125 

Prices,  fall  of,  sixty  per  cent  in  English  exports  in  thirty-five  years 92 

Prices,  fluctuations  of 100 

Prices,  how  reduced  by  protective  duties 226 

Prices  in  England,  reflected  effect  of  on  our  crops 188 

Prices  of  foreign  goods  regulated  by  domestic  competition 225 

Prices  of  laud  and  labor  rise  ;  of  products,  decline 126 

Produce,  annual,  the  measure  of  provision  for  men 40 

Production,  definition  of 107 

Production  in  geometrical  ratio  to  the  money  impulse 122 

Production  of  food  in  the  oldest  countries  increases GO 

Products,  domestic,  proportion  to  foreign  imports 160 

Products,  of  1860  over  1850,  in  detail 51 

Products  of  manufactures,  value  of,  in  1850  and  1860  in  United  States     93 

Productive  industry,  its  conditions 292 

Productive  industry,  necessary  to  growth  of  man  and  of  societies 17 

Profits,  larger,  depend  upon  higher  wages 89 

Profits,  net,  in  the  ratio  of  sales 302 

Progress  in  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.... .- 31 

Progress  of  the  last  five  centuries,  character  and  aim  of 250 

Property  in  United  States,  pro  rata  share  in  1850  and  1860 49 

Protective  doctrine  of  our  statesmen  forty  years  ago ;  errors  of. 207 

Protective  duties  hold  prices  down 226 

Protection  and  free  trade 190 

Protection,  distributes  and  adapts  the  industries  to  all  capacities  223,  227 

Protection,  doctrine  and  policy  of 204 

Protectipn  does  not  regard  market  values  211 

Protection  favors  growth  of  trade  in  money  value 215 

Protection  in  Prussia,  Belgium,  France,  llussia 239,  240,  241,  242 

Protection  in  the  historic  nations 235 

Protection  is  not  arrayed  against  foreign  trade,  but  promotes  it 215 

Protection,  its  influence  in  economic  value  of  trade 215 

Protection,  means  free  domestic  trade ;  its  guiding  rules 208 

Protection,  objections  to 221 

Protective  policy  in  national  history  and  destiny 246 

Protection  the  reciprocal  of  allegiance 223 

Protection  unjustly  classed  with  obsolete  abuses 222 


INDEX.  361 

Protection,  what  it  is 205 

Protection  aims  at  diversification  of  domestic  industries 215 

Protection  secures  and  defends  the  opportunity  of  free  labor 224 

Proverbs  concerning  wealth  and  power,  not   true 2'JO 

Provisions,  exports  of,  prices  governed  by  quantities 188 

Provision  for  human  needs,  moves  faster  than  population 52 

Pyramids  and  poor-houses 2G1 

Q 

Quantity  of  action  of  any  of  the  functions  not  fixed 80 

R 

Races,  laws  of,  regulating  German,  Italian  and  Austrian  nationalities  37 

Races,  none  of  them  cosmopolitan.... 32 

Ramsay  and  Belknap !•)<> 

Rank  and  right  of  rule,  determined 30 

Railroads  monopolize  their  traffic 288 

Railroads  of  England,  burdens  aud  rapidity  of  transportation 50 

Rails,  steel,  imported,  price  falls  under  increased  duties 220 

Rate  of  increase  of  production  in  United  States,  in  decade  1850-60 50 

Raw  material,  in  manufactures,  average  value  of Ki'.t 

Raw  materials,  proportion  of  value  of,  to  products ->3 

Reformed  drunkards,  proselytism 272 

Reformers,  knowledge  necessary  to 12 

Religion  and  race  will  not  account  for  the  ruin  of  the  nations  that  have 

adopted  free  trade  246 

Remedies  in  history  for  monopoly  of  [tower 289 

Republic,  the  great,  its  influences 253 

Reproductive  function,  not  a  constant  quantity 72 

Reserved  rights,  the  ruling  aim  of  modern  progress 250 

Residents  of  United  States,  only  seven  per  cent  of,  out  of  their  natal 

climate 35 

Retail  stores,  their  cost  and  burden  to  the  poor 2t»8 

Revenue  from  customs  under  our  protective  and  uriprotective  tariffs 213 

Revenue,  only  an  incident  to  protection,  but  invariably  follows  it; 

proof,  in  the  tables  of  customs'  duties 213 

Revenue  reformers  reduce  themselves  to  $25,000,000  of  revenue  from 

customs  232 

Revolution  in  political  government,  returning  to  order 251 

Revolutions,  intellectual  and  religious  in  the  fifteenth  century 31 

Revulsions  neither  inevitable  nor  inexplicable 201 

Revulsion,  imminent  in  1800,  postponed  and  averted  by  the  Rebellion 

and  the  Morrill  tariff 203 

Ricardo,  on  increasing  sterility  of  the  earth 44 

Rights,  not  duties,  the  drift  of  modern  democracy 250 


362  INDEX. 

Rochdale  Pioneers ;  origin  ;  capital ;  results  in  twenty-two  years  of  trial ; 

financial  history;  details  of  a  grand  success;  self-help 300,  301 

Roman  money,  comparative  value  of 113 

Romans,  resided  only  in  Italy 34 

Rudiments  of  all  the  higher  forms,  in  savage  society 18 

Russia,  communes  described 311 

government  of... 312 

Russian  merchants,  small  proportion  to  the  population 312 

Russian  population,  ninety  per  cent  rural 312 

Russia,  protective  system,  its  results 242 

S 

Saturn,  reign  of,  on  earth 15 

Sauagism,  the  earliest  stage  of  society  known  to  philosophy 1G 

Savage  life,  badly  provided  for 04 

Savage  society,  analogous  to  individual  infancy 18 

Savage  state,  no  capital,  no  wages,  no  division  of  labor 86 

Savage   tribes,  limited  industry  of 10 

Savages,  the  rule  of  the  strongest 17 

Savings  banks,  in  New  England 259 

Savings  banks  in  United  States,  history  of 250 

Savings  banks,  origin  and  extent  of 257 

amount  of  deposits  held  in  England;  depositors  in 257 

parliamentary  regulation  of 258 

their  excellent  service 258 

Schools,  common,  in  the  United  States 254 

in  Prussia 254 

Schools,  common,  resistance  of  the  House  of  Lords  in  1839 254 

Schultze,  Herman 300,  308 

Sciences,  the  natural,  built  upon  the  harmonies  of  nature 75 

Scotland,  banks  of,  excellence  of  the  system 151 

principles  upon  which  they  are  conducted 152 

popularity  of 152 

Secret    orders,    almost   innumerable;    list,   of    those    in    the    City    of 

Philadelphia 270 

Secret  orders,  differ  from  the  religious  sects  in  their  relations  !o  each 

other 278 

membership  in  them  multiplied  with  proportionate  benefits  se 
cured 278 

Secret  orders,  immense  extension  of 2(55 

Secret  orders  of  colored  people 279 

Secret  orders,  universal  membership  in,  of  the  provident  poor 279 

Selfhood  the  basis  of  the  Political  Economy  in  vogue 250 

Service  value,  Frederick  Bastiat 87 

Secret  societies...  ..  204 


INDEX.  363 

Slave  trade,  a  hundred  years  ago,  its  abolition 253 

Smith,  Adam,  on  efl'ect  of  influx  of  money 117 

Smith,  Adam,  on  service  of  paper  representatives  of  money 135 

Smith,  Say,  and  Mill,  their  dogma  of  competition 327 

Societary  forces,  three  classes  of 252 

Societary  growth,  stages  of 250 

Societary  movements,  their  characteristics 24'.) 

Sons  of  Temperance,  beneficial  provisions 273 

Sons  of  Temperance,  progress  and  decline  of 274 

Sophism  of  free  traders,  in  respect  to  natural  advantages  of  climate 

and  soil 210 

SOURCES  OF  ADVANCEMENT  IN  WEALTH 54 

Space  not  conquered  as  time  is  by  the  telegraph 105 

Spain,  cooperation  in ,  311 

Spencer  Herbert 84 

Spiritualism  in  science 251 

Springs,  material  and  moral,  in  society 200,  282 

Standard  of  value  impossible 113 

Statistical  calculations  and  estimates 104 

Statistics  of  trade  and  production,  diU'ercnccs  of  the  authorities 107 

Steam  and  machinery,  increase  wages 00 

Strike  of  vvorkingmen  in  Lower  Silesia 314 

Substitution,  instances  of,  vegetable  for  animal,  and  mineral  for  both...  G4 

Substitution  of  the  abundant  and  cheap,  for  the  scarce  and  dear 63 

Substitutions  of  cheaper  and  more  abundant  commodities,  table  of. 07 

Suffrage  and  idleness ,. 210 

Suffering  not  greater  than  sin,  and  orderly  and  necessary 00 

Sugur,  beet-root,  in  France 48 

Super-n&tur&l,  in  the  mechanical  powers 54 

"Supply  and  demand,"  abuse  of  the  maxim 327 

T 

Tariff  act,  the  first,  preamble  of 100 

Tariff  acts  from  1780  to  1812 107 

Tariff  of  1824,  compelled  by  universal  distress 108 

Tariffs  of  1824  and  1828,  errors  of 108 

Tariff  of  1828,  gave  abundant  revenue  along  with  adequate  protection  109 

Tariff  of  1842,  imports  under  per  capita 202 

Tariff  of  1842,  modified  in  1840 201 

Tariff' of  1840,  its  general  character 201 

Tariff  of  1857,  imports  under  per  capita 202 

Tariffs  for  revenue  always  fail  of  their  intention 213 

Tariff  for  revenue  with  incidental  protection,  absurdity  of 210 

Temperance  pledge,  in  numerous  secret  orders 276 

Temperance  reform,  origin  and  progress  of 272 


364  INDEX. 

Temperance  reform,  origin  and  spread 253 

Textile  fabrics  and  metallic  products  unlimited 58 

Theories,  erroneous,  of  Political  Economy,  based  upon  facia  in  disorder  41 

Thompson,  George,  picture  of  British  Vule  in  India 245 

Tobacco,  exports,  value  of .  187 

Trade  between  nations  diversely  situated 176 

Trade  disintegrates  the  man  and  the  community 161,  102 

Trade  in  natural  products,  should  be  across  climates 173 

Trade  in  artificial  products 175 

Trade,  international,  contributions  to  support  of  old  countries 01 

Trade  legitimate,  indicating  its  course 187 

Trade  maritime,  not  a  peace-maker 103 

Trade,  must  be  complementary,  not  competitive 173 

Trade  of  England,  which  imports  no  manufactures 215 

Trade  of  France,  which  excludes  manufactures 215 

Trade  reports,  uncertainty  and  inaccuracy  of 107 

Trade  unions,  the  insurrections  that  make  revolutions 2'.»3 

Trader's  philosophy,  a  justification  of  the  disorders  of  business 328 

Transportation,  consuming  cost  of 107 

merchants  of  old 1<>8 

Transportation,  defies  and  defeats  competition 288 

Transportation,  exhaustive  cos-t  of 183 

Transportation,  rapidly  growing  into  masterdom 2S'.) 

Transportation,  relative  value  of  foreign  and  domestic  goods 109 

Treason,  only  a  misdemeanor  in  the  United  States 256 

Tropical  products,  duties  on,  enhance  price  to  consumers 225 

Turkey,  debasement  of  the  coin 244 

.  history  of  her  manufactures 243 

Turkey,  her  free  trade,  audits  results 243 

Turkey,  internal  trade  of,  in  the  hands  of  foreign  peddlers 243 

U 

Union  of  interests  and  efforts,  force  of 302 

United  American  Mechanics,  constitution  and  objects,  members,  growth, 

cost  of  reliefs .' 277 

United  States,  capabilities  and  growth  of;   their  work;   their  people, 

and  their  destiny 193 

rapid  and  frequent  changes  in  their  commercial  policy 194 

repression  of  their  manufactures  when  they  were  Colonies 19-1 

United  States,  capital,  wealth,  and  rate  of  increase  of. 49 

United  States,  favorable  conditions  of , 316,  317 

V 

Value,  definition   of 87,89 

Value,  exchange  standard  of,  impossible 113 


INDEX.  3G5 

Value,  economic,  of  imports,  distinguished  from  money  value ICO 

Value  of  exports  and  imports,  per  cttpitn 165 

Value  of  products  declines  as  land  and  labor  rise 89 

Velocity  gained  by  steam-power  and  machinery 50 

Viability  and  fecundity  adjusted  to  each  other 78 

w 

Wages 80 

Wages,  accumulations  of,  in  United  States,  afford  a.  sufficient  capital  to 

make  the  laborers  self-employing 324 

Wages  and  capital,  proportions  of,  in  the  products 97 

Wages  and  capital,  proportion  of  profits  on  manufacture 93 

Wages  and  food , 102 

Wages,  comparative  value,  in  1814  and.  in  1800 103 

Wages  doubled  in  England  in  112  years 92 

Wages,  English,  in  the  17th  century 91 

Wages,  equitable  increase  in,  under  the  law  of  distribution 88 

Wages,  growth  of,  governed  by  a  general  law 94 

Wagos,  how  affected  by  protection  and  free  trade 227 

Wages  in  the  United  States,  increase  fifteen  per  cent  in  ten  years, 

double  in  forty-seven  years 94 

Wages,  increase  of,  due  to  cooperating  capital,  but,  not  at,  its  loss 96 

Wages  keep  pace  with  growth  of  general  wealth 94 

Wages,  leveling  tendency  in  rise  of 99 

Wages,  nominal  and  real  00 

Wages  of  men  doubled  in  money,  increased  fourfold  in  purchasing  power 

over  their  own  products 102 

Wages  of  skilled  labor  in  17th  century,  and  rise  of  in  18th  and  19ih 

centuries 90 

Wages  of  women  have  tripled,  while  those  of  men  doubled 98 

Wages  outgrow  the  profits  of  cooperating  capital '. 94 

Wages,  provision  for  increase  of,  traced  to  its  source 95 

Wages,  proportion  of,  to  value  of  products 93 

Wages  rise  in  proportion  to  productiveness  of  capital  and  labor 93 

Wages  rise  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  the  cost  of  products 93 

Wages  rise  with  increase  of  money,  why 125 

Wages  rise  with  profits 89 

Wages,  rise  of,  with  decline  of  price  in  commodities 92 

Wages  system,  its  character 284 

Wages,  the  index  of  productiveness  103 

War,  origin  of,  among  savages 10 

Washington's  domestic  coat 190 

Washington  on  the  happy  results  of  the  first  tariff' act 190 

Waste  of  life  not  required  to  correct  its  excess 42 

Water  gas,  an  equali/er  of  national  industries 08 


366  INDEX. 

Water  gas,  will  replace  England's  exhausted  coal G8 

Wealth  and  population,  relative  growth  of,  in  Great  Britain v 47 

Wealth,  answers  to  culture  under  natural  laws 41 

Wealth,  British,  how  estimated 40 

Weight  carried  on  English  railroads 5(5 

Wealth,  distribution  of 80 

Wealth,  distribution  of,  in  barbarism — in  civilization 80 

Wealth,  distributive  shares,  double  in  England  in  twenty-five  years 47 

Wealth,  growth  of,  accelerating  in  Great  Britain 45 

Wealth,  growth  of,  according  to  Gladstone 40 

Wealth,  growth  of  English,  since  she  used  American  cotton 02 

Wealth,  growth  of,  in  Great  Britain,  according  to  Joseph  Lowe 45 

Wealth,  growth  of,  in  Great  Britain,  according  to  Leone  Levi 45 

Wealth,  growth  of,  its  indications 57 

Wealth,  growth  of  the  general;  power  of  capital  over  labor 290 

Wealth,  increases  in  England  three  and  one-half  per  cent  per  annum, 
doubling  once  in  twenty  years,  or  two  and  a  half  times  faster  than 

population 40 

Wealth,  in  United  States,  average  share  of  inhabitants 49 

Wealth  is  power  at  compound  interest 41 

Wealth  of  England,  mode  of  estimating  it 107 

Wealth  of  the  masses 325 

Wealth  of  the  people  in  contrast  with  that  of  the  rich 291 

WEALTH,  THE  LAWS  AND  CONDITIONS  OP  ITS  GBOWTII ." 40 

Wealth,  the  measure  of  man's  power  over  nature 41 

Webster,  Daniel,  on  Political  Economy 191 

Whale  fisheries,  conducted  by  cooperation 324 

Wheat,  grown  in  France 48 

Wheat,  home  consumption  of 185 

Wheat,  in  England,  quantity  to  the  acre 01 

Wheat  in  the  United  States,  average  crop  of , 01 

Wheat,  Mediterranean,  grown  on  the  oldest  soil  in  Europe 01 

Wheat,  potatoes,  and  animal  food,  equivalents  of 05 

Wheat,  price  of  in  1661,  1840,  and  1865,  in  England 91 

Wheat,  unchanged  in  price  in  170  years 92 

Williamson  and  Marshall,  on  the  distresses  of  the  period  preceding  the 

Federal  Union 195 

Women  arid  negroes,  excluded  by  K.  of  P 272 

Women  and  negroes  excluded  from  Order  of  Odd  Fellows 200 

Women,  being  more  and  more  admitted  into  secret  orders 279 

Women  employed  in  manufactures,  number  and  wages 218 

Women  excluded  by  S.  of  T.,  till  lately 275 

causes  of  decline  of  the  Order 275 

Women,  improved  condition  of 101 

wages,  real,  increased  six  times  in  50  years... 102 


INDEX.  367 

Women,  statistics  of  their  employments  in  I860 211) 

Women,  their  dependence  upon  diversified  industry 217 

Women,  their  interest  in  protection;  must  work  if  they  would  rule 218 

Women,  wages  of,  have  tripled  while  those  of  men  doubled 98 

Women,  wages  of,  proportion  to  those  of  men* U:> 

Women's  wages,  rise  in  purchasing  power 101 

Workingmen's  union  in  Prussia,  principles  of 313 

Y 

Young,  Arthur,  estimate  of  relative  increase  of  money  and  prices 124 

Z 

Zollverein,  its  happy  adaptation  to  German  industry 211 

Zollverein,  principle  of  protection  discarded  valuations 211 

Zollverein,  results  of,  in  Germany '. 212 


CATALOGUE 

OP 

PRACTICAL  AND  SCIENTIFIC  BOOKS, 

PUBLISHED  BY 

HENRY    CAREY    BAIRD, 

INDUSTRIAL   PUBLISHER, 

UXTo-   4O6    "W.A. 31, HXT TJ T    STIREET, 
PHILADKLPHIA. 


1  Any  of  the  Books  comprised  in  this  Catalogue  will  be  se'nt  by  mail, 

free  of  postage,  at  the  publication  price. 
£3*"  MY  NEW  AND  ENLARGED  CATALOGUE,  95  pages  Svo.,  with  full  descriptions 
of  Books,  will  be  sent,  free  of  postage,  to  any  one  who  will  favor  me 
with  his  address. 


A  RMENGAUD,  AMOUROUX,  AND  JOHNSON.— THE  PRACTICAL 
•"•  DRAUGHTSMAN'S  BOOK  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DESIGN,  AND 
MACHINIST'S  AND  ENGINEER'S  DRAWING  COMPANION: 
Forming  a  complete  course  of  Mechanical  Engineering  and 
Architectural  Drawing.  From  the  French  of  M.  Armengaud 
the  elder,  Prof,  of  Design  in  the  Conservatoire  of  Arts  and 
Industry,  Paris,  and  MM.  Armengaud  the  younger  and  Amou- 
roux,  Civil  Engineers.  Rewritten  and  arranged,  with  addi 
tional  matter  and  plates,  selections  from  and  examples  of  the 
most  useful  and  generally  employed  mechanism  of  the  day. 
By  WILLIAM  JOHNSON,  Assoc.  Inst.  C.  E.,  Editor  of  "The 
Practical  Mechanic's  Journal."  Illustrated  by  50  folio  steel 
plates  and  50  wood-cuts.  A  new  edition,  4to.  .  $10  00 

ARLOT.— A  COMPLETE  GUIDE  FOR  COACH  PAINTERS. 

Translated  from  the  French  of  M.  ARLOT,  Coach  Painter;  late 
Master  Painter  for  eleven  years  with  M.  Ehrler,  Coach  Manufac 
turer,  Paris.  With  important  American  additions  .  .  $1  25 

A  RROWSMITH.— PAPER-HANGER' S  COMPANION : 

A  Treatise  in  which  the  Practical  Operations  of  the  Trade  are 
Systematically  laid  down:  with  Copious  Directions  Prepara 
tory  to  Papering;  Preventives  against  the  Effect  of  Damp  on 
Walls;  the  Various  Cements  and  Pastes  adapted  to  the  Seve 
ral  Purposes  of  the  Trade;  Observations  and  Directions  for 
the  Panelling  and  Ornamenting  of  Rooms,  &c.  By  JAMES 
ARROWSMITH.  12mo.,  cloth  .  .  .  .  .  §1  25 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


T>AIRD.— THE  AMERICAN    COTTON    SPINNER,   AND    MANA- 
-°     GER'S  AND  CARDER'S  GUIDE  : 

A  Practical  Treatise  on  Cotton  Spinning;  giving  the  Dimen 
sions  and  Speed  of  Machinery,  Draught  and  Twist  Calcula 
tions,  etc.;  with  notices  of  recent  Improvements:  together 
with  Rules  and  Examples  for  making  changes  in  the  sizes  and 
numbers  of  Roving  and  Yarn.  Compiled  from  the  papers  of 
the  late  ROBERT  H.  BAIRD.  12mo.  .  .  .  $1  50 

•DAKER.— LONG-SPAN  RAILWAY  BRIDGES  : 

Comprising  Investigations  of  the  Comparative  Theoretical  and 
Practical  Advantages  of  the  various  Adopted  or  Proposed  Type 
Systems  of  Construction;  with  numerous  Formulae  and  Ta 
bles.  By  B.  Baker.  12mo $2  00 

T)  AKEWELL.—  A  MANUAL  OF  ELECTRICITY— PRACTICAL  AND 

D     THEORETICAL : 

By  F.  C.  BAKEWELL,  Inventor  of  the  Copying  Telegraph.  Se 
cond  Edition.  Revised  and  enlarged.  Illustrated  by  nume 
rous  engravings.  12mo.  Cloth  .... 

"DEANS  —A  TREATISE  ON  RAILROAD  CURVES  AND  THE  LO- 
D    CATION  OF  RAILROADS  : 

By  E.  W.  BEAKS,  C.  E.     12mo.       ...  $200 

TYLENKARN.— PRACTICAL  SPECIFICATIONS  OF  WORKS  EXE- 
"     CUTED    IN    ARCHITECTURE,    CIVIL    AND    MECHANICAL 
ENGINEERING,   AND   IN  ROAD  MAKING  AND    SEWER 
ING: 

To  which  are  added  a  series  of  practically  useful  Agreements 
and  Reports.  By  JOHN  BLENKARN.  Illustrated  by  fifteen 
large  folding  plates.  Svo.  .  .  .  .  .  §9  00 

•DLINN.— A  PRACTICAL  WORKSHOP  COMPANION  FOR  TIN, 
•°     SHEET-IRON,  AND  COPPER-PLATE  WORKERS  : 

Containing  Rules  for  Describing  various  kinds  of  Patterns 
used  by  Tin,  Sheet-iron,  and  Copper-plate  Workers  ;  Practical 
Geometry;  Mensuration  of  Surfaces  and  Solids;  Tables  of  the 
Weight  of  Metals,  Lead  Pipe,  etc.;  Tables  of  Areas  and  Cir 
cumferences  of  Circles ;  Japans,  Varnishes,  Lackers,  Cements, 
Compositions,  etc.  etc.  By  LEROY  J.  BLINN,  Master  Me 
chanic.  With  over  One  Hundred  Illustrations,  12mo.  §260 


HEMRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


B 


OOTH.-MARELE  WORKER'S  MANUAL: 

Containing  Practical  Information  respecting  Marbles  in  gene 
ral,  their  Cutting,  Working,  and  Polishing ;  Veneering  of 
Marble  ;  Mosaics  ;  Composition  and  Use  of  Artificial  Marble, 
Stuccos,  Cements,  Receipts,  Secrets,  etc.  etc.  Translated 
from  the  French  by  M.  L.  BOOTH.  With  an  Appendix  con 
cerning  American  Marbles.  12mo.,  cloth  .  .  $1  50 

•DOOTH  AND  MORFIT.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDIA  OF  CHEMISTRY, 

°    PRACTICAL  AND  THEORETICAL  : 

Embracing  its  application  to  the  Arts,  Metallurgy,  Mineralogy, 
Geology,  Medicine,  and  Pharmacy.  By  JAMES  C.  BOOTH, 
Melter  and  Refiner  in  the  United  States  Mint,  Professor  of 
Applied  Chemistry  in  the  Franklin  Institute,  etc.,  assisted  by 
CAMPBELL  MORFIT,  author  of  "Chemical  Manipulations,"  etc. 
Seventh  edition.  Complete  in  one  volume,  royal  8vo.,  978 
pages,  with  numerous  wood-cuts  and  other  illustrations.  §5  00 

pOWDITCH,— ANALYSIS,  TECHNICAL   VALUATION,  PURIFI- 

°    CATION,  AND  USE  OF  COAL  GAS : 

By  Rev.  W.  R.  BOWBITCII.  Illustrated  with  wood  engrav 
ings.  8vo $6  50 

•pOX.— PRACTICAL  HYDRAULICS : 

A  Series  of  Rules  and  Tables  for  the  use  of  Engineers,  etc. 
By  THOMAS  Box.  12mo. $2  50 

•nUCKMASTER.— THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MECHANICAL  PHYSICS  : 
By  J.  C.  BUCKMASTER,  late  Student  in  the  Government  School 
of  Mines ;  Certified  Teacher  of  Science  by  the  Department  of 
Science  and  Art;  Examiner  in  Chemistry  and  Physics  in  tho 
Royal  College  of  Preceptors;  and  late  Lecturer  in  Chemistry 
and  Physics  of  the  Royal  Polytechnic  Institute.  Illustrated 
with  numerous  engravings.  In  one  vol.  12mo.  .  $1  50 


B 


ULLOCK.— THE  AMERICAN  COTTAGE  BUILDER  : 

A  Series  of  Designs,  Plans,  and  Specifications,  from  $200  to 
to  $20,000  for  Homes  for  the  People;  together  with  Warm 
ing,  Ventilation,  Drainage,  Painting, .and  Landscape  Garden 
ing.  By  JOHN  BULLOCK,  Architect,  Civil  Engineer,  Mechani 
cian,  and  Editor  of  "The  Rudiments  of  Architecture  and 
Building,"  etc.  Illustrated  by  75  engravings.  In  one  vol. 
8vo.  .  . $3  50 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S    CATALOGUE. 


mLLOCK.  — THE    RUDIMENTS     OF     ARCHITECTURE    AND 

D    BUILDING: 

For  the  use  of  Architects,  Builders,  Draughtsmen,  Machin 
ists,  Engineers,  and  Mechanics.  Edited  by  JOHN  BULLOCK, 
author  of  "The  American  Cottage  Builder."  Illustrated  by 
250  engravings.  In  one  volume  8vo.  .  .  .  $3  50 

•DURGH.— PRACTICAL  ILLUSTRATIONS   OF  LAND  AND  MA- 

-0    RINE  ENGINES : 

Showing  in  detail  the  Modern  Improvements  of  High  and  Low 
Pressure,  Surface  Condensation,  and  Super-heating,  together 
with  Land  and  Marine  Boilers.  By  N.  P.  BURGH,  Engineer. 
Illustrated  by  twenty  plates,  double  elephant  folio,  with  text. 

$21  00 

TjTJRGH.— PRACTICAL    RULES    FOR  THE  PROPORTIONS   OF 

D     MODERN  ENGINES  AND   BOILERS  FOR  LAND  AND  MA 
RINE  PURPOSES. 
By  N.  P.  BURG  u,  Engineer.     12mo.  .         .         .     $2  00 

•DTJRGH.— THE  SLIDE-VALVE  PRACTICALLY  CONSIDERED : 
By  N.  P.  BURGH,  author  of  "  A  Treatise  on  Sugar  Machinery," 
"Practical  Illustrations  of  Land  and  Marine  Engines,"  "A 
Pocket-Book  of  Practical  Rules  for  Designing  Land  and  Ma 
rine  Engines,  Boilers,"  etc.  etc.  etc.  Completely  illustrated. 
12mo.  .  . $2  00 

•pYRN.— THE  COMPLETE  PRACTICAL  BREWER : 

Or,  Plain,  Accurate,  and  Thorough  Instructions  in  the  Art  of 
Brewing  Beer,  Ale,  Porter,  including  the  Process  of  making 
Bavarian  Beer,  all  the  Small  Beers,  such  as  Root-beer,  Ginger- 
pop,  Sarsaparilla-beer,  Mead,  Spruce  beer,  etc.  etc.  Adapted 
to  the  use  of  Public  Brewers  and  Private  Families.  By  M.  LA 
FAYETTE  BYRN,  M.  D.  With  illustrations.  12mo.  $125 

TDYR2T.— THE  COMPLETE  PRACTICAL  DISTILLER : 

Comprising  the  most  perfect  and  exact  Theoretical  and  Prac 
tical  Description  of  the  Art  of  Distillation  and  Rectification ; 
including  all  of  the  most  recent  improvements  in  distilling 
apparatus;  instructions  for  preparing  spirits  from  the  nume 
rous  vegetables,  fruits,  etc.  ;  directions  for  the  distillation  and 
preparation  of  all  kinds  of  brandies  and  other  spirits,  spiritu 
ous  and  other  compounds,  etc.  etc. ;  all  of  which  is  so  simpli 
fied  that  it  is  adapted  not  only  to  the  use  of  extensive  distil 
lers,  but  for  every  farmer,  or  others  who  may  wish  to  engage 
in  the  art  of  distilling  By  M.  LA  FAYETTE  BYRN,  M.  D, 

.•-  With  numerous  engravings.     In  one  jpume,  12mo.        $1  5,0 
?x 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE 

pYRNE.— POCKET  BOOK  FOR  RAILROAD   AND   CIVIL 

•°     NEERS : 

Containing  New,  Exact,  and  Concise  Methods  for  Laying  out 
Railroad  Curves,  Switches,  Frog  Angles  and  Crossings;  the 
Staking  out  of  work;  Levelling;  the  Calculation  of  Cut 
tings;  Embankments;  Earth-work,  etc.  By  OLIVER  BYRNE. 
Illustrated,  18mo.,  full  bound  .  .  .  .  $1  75 

pYRNE.—THE  HANDBOOK  FOR  THE  ARTISAN,  MECHANIC, 
AND  ENGINEER : 

By  OLIVEK  BYRNE.     Illustrated  by  185  Wood  Engravings.     Svo. 

$5  00 

TDYRNE.— THE   ESSENTIAL  ELEMENTS  OF  PRACTICAL    ME- 
0    CHANICS : 

For  Engineering  Students,  based  on  the  Principle  of  Work. 
By  OLIVER  BYRNE.  Illustrated  by  Numerous  Wood  Engrav 
ings,  12mo $3  63 

T5YRNE.— THE  PRACTICAL  METAL-WORKER'S  ASSISTANT; 
Comprising  Metallurgic  Chemistry;  the  Arts  of  Working  all 
Metals  and  Alloys ;  Forging  of  Iron  and  Steel ;  Hardening  and 
Tempering;  Melting  and  Mixing;  Casting  and  Founding; 
Works  in  Sheet  Metal ;  the  Processes  Dependent  on  the 
Ductility  of  the  Metals ;  Soldering  ;  and  the  most  Improved 
Processes  and  Tools  employed  by  Metal-Workers.  With  the 
Application  of  the  Art  of  Electro-Metallurgy  to  Manufactu 
ring  Processes ;  collected  from  Original  Sources,  and  from  the 
Works  of  Holtzapffel,  Bergeron,  Leupold,  Plumier,  Napier,  and 
others.  By  OLIVER  BYRNE.  A  New,  Revised,  and  improved 
Edition,  with  Additions  by  John  Scoflfern,  M.  B  ,  William  Clay, 
Win.  Fairbairn,  F.  R.  S.,  and  James  Napier.  With  Five  Hun 
dred  and  Ninety-two  Engravings ;  Illustrating  every  Branch 
of  the  Subject.  In  one  volume,  Svo.  652  pages  .  $7  00 

"pYRNE.— THE  PRACTICAL  MODEL  CALCULATOR: 

For  the  Engineer,  Mechanic,  Manufacturer  of  Engine  Work, 
Naval  Architect,  Miner,  and  Millwright.  By  OLIVER  BYRNE. 
1  volume,  8vo.,  nearly  GOO  pages  .  .  .  .  $4  50 

•DEMROSE.— MANUAL  OF  WOOD  CARVIN3  :  With  Practical  II- 

lustuations  for  Learners  of  the  Art,  and  Original  and  Selected  de 
signs.  By  WILLIAM  BEMUOSE,  Jr.  With  an  Introduction  by 
LLEWELLYN  JEWITT,  F.  S.  A.,  etc.  With  128  Illustrations.  4to., 
cloth $3  00 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


•DAIRD.— PROTECTION  OF  HOME   LABOR   AND   HOME    PRO- 
-0    DUCTIONS   NECESSARY   TO   THE   PROSPERITY    OF    THE 

AMERICAN  FARMER: 

By  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD.     8vo.,  paper       .  10 

•DAIRD.— THE  RIGHTS  OF  AMERICAN  FR6DUCERS,  AND  THE 

•°    WRONGS  OF  BRITISH  FREE  TRADE  REVENUE  REFORM. 

By  HISNRY  CAREY  BAIRD.     (1870)  ....          5 

TDAIRD.— SOME  OF  THE  FALLACIES  OF  BRITISH-FREE-TRADE 
D    REVENUE-REFORM. 

Two  Letters  to  Prof.  A.  L.  Perry,  of  Williams  College,  Mass.  By 
HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD.  (1871.)  Paper  ....  5 

AIRD.— STANDARD  WAGES  COMPUTING  TABLES: 

An  Improvement  in  all  former  Methods  of  Computation,  so  ar 
ranged  that  wages  for  days,  hours,  or  fractions  of  hours,  at  a  spe 
cified  rate  per  day  or  hour,  may  be  ascertained  at  a  glance.  By 
T.  SPANGLER  BAIRD.  Oblong  folio $5  00 

•DAUERMAN.— TREATISE  ON  THE  METALLURGY  OF  IRON. 
•°    Illustrated.     12mo.        .  $2  50 


B 


B 


ICKNELL',8  VILLAGE  BUILDER. 

55  large  plates.     4to $10  00 

BISHOP.— A  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  MANUFACTURES: 

From  1608  to  1866  ;  exhibiting  the  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Prin 
cipal  Mechanic  Arts  and  Manufactures,  from  the  Earliest  Colonial 
Period  to  the  Present  Time  ;  By  J.  LEAXDER  BISHOP,  M.  D.,  ED 
WARD  YOUNG,  and  EDWIN  T.  FREEDLEY.  Three  vols.  8vo., 

$10  00 

•nOX.— A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  HEAT  AS  APPLIED  TO 

D    THE  USEFUL  ARTS: 

For  the  use  of  Engineers,  Architects,  etc.  By  THOMAS  Box,  au 
thor  of  "Practical  Hydraulics."  Illustrated  by  14  plates,  con 
taining  114  figures.  12mo $4  25 

QABINET  MAKER'S  ALBUM  OF  FURNITURE  : 

Comprising  a  Collection  of  Designs  for  the  Newest  and  Most 
Elegant  Styles  of  Furniture.  Illustrated  by  Forty-eight  Large 
and  Beautifully  Engraved  Plates.  In  one  volume,  oblong 

$5  OC 

QHAPMAN.— A  TREATISE  ON  ROPE-MAKING : 

As  practised  in  private  and  public  Rope-yards,  with  a  Description 
of  the  Manufacture,  Rules,  Tables  of  Weights,  etc.,  adapted  to  the 
Trade  ;  Shipping,  Mining,  Railways,  Builders,  etc.  By  ROBERT 
CHAPMAN.  24mo »  .  .  .  $1  50 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE.  '  7 

pRAIK.— THE    PRACTICAL   AMERICAN    MILLWRIGHT   AND 

W     MILLER. 

Comprising  the  Elementary  Principles  of  Mechanics,  Me 
chanism,  and  Motive  Power,  Hydraulics  and  Hydraulic 
Motors,  Mill-dams,  Saw  Mills,  Grist  Mills,  the  Oat  Meal  Mill, 
the  Barley  Mill,  Wool  Carding,  and  Cloth  Fulling  and  Dress 
ing,  Wind  Mills,  Steam  Power,  &c.  By  DAVID  CKAIK,  Mill 
wright.  Illustrated  hy  numerous  wood  engravings,  and  five 
folding  plates.  1  vol.  8vo.  .  .  .  .  $5  00 

riAMPIN.— A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  MECHANICAL   EN 
GINEERING: 

Comprising  Metallurgy,  Moulding,  Casting,  Forging,  Tools, 
Workshop  Machinery,  Mechanical  Manipulation,  Manufacture 
of  Stearn-engines,  etc.  etc.  With  an  Appendix  on  the  Ana 
lysis  of  Iron  and  Iron  Ores.  By  FRANCIS  CAM  PIN,  C.  E.  To 
•which  are  added,  Observations  on  the  Construction  of  Steam 
Boilers,  and  Remarks  upon  Furnaces  used  for  Smoke  Preven 
tion  ;  with  a  Chapter  on  Explosions.  By  R.  Armstrong,  C.  E., 
and  John  Bourne.  Rules  for  Calculating  the  Change  Wheels 
for  Screws  on  a  Turning  Lathe,  and  for  a  Wheel-cutting 
Machine.  By  J.  LA  NICCA.  Management  of  Steel,  including 
Forging,  Hardening,  Tempering,  Annealing,  Shrinking,  and 
Expansion.  And  the  Case-hardening  of  Iron.  By  G.  EDE. 
8vo.  Illustrated  with  29  plates  and  100  wood  engravings. 

$6  00 

pAMPIN.— THE    PRACTICE    OF  HAND-TURNING  IN  WOOD, 
U     IVORY,  SHELL,  ETC.  ? 

With  Instructions  for  Turning  such  works  in  Metal  as  may  be 
required  in  the  Practice  of  Turning  Wood,  Ivory,  etc.  Also 
an  Appendix  on  Ornamental  Turning.  By  FUANCIS  CAMPIN  , 
with  Numerous  Illustrations,  ]2mo.,  cloth  .  .  $3  00 

p  APRON  DE  DOLE  — DUSSAUCE.— BLUES  AND  CARMINES  OF 
U  INDIGO. 

A  Practical  Treatise  on  the  Fabrication  of  every  Commercial 
Product  derived  from  Indigo.  By  FELICIEN  CAPRON  DE  DOLE 
Translated,  with  important  additions,  by  Professor  II.  DUS 
SAUCE.  12mo. 


'HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


.— THE  WORKS  OF  HENRY  c.  CAREY  : 

CONTRACTION  OR  EXPANSION?  REPUDIATION  OR  RE 
SUMPTION?  Letters  to  Hon.  Hugh  McCulloch.  8vo.  38 

FINANCIAL  CRISES,  their  Causes  and  Effects.     8vo.  paper 

25 

HARMONY   OF   INTERESTS;    Agricultural,    Manufacturimg, 

and  Commercial.     8vo.,  paper  .         .         .         .         .     $1  00 

Do.  do.  cloth          .         .         .     $1  50 

LETTERS  TO  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 
Paper $1  00 

MANUAL  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE.  Condensed  from  Carey's 
"  Principles  of  Social  Science."  By  KATE  McKEAN.  1  vol. 
12mo $2  25 

MISCELLANEOUS  WORKS:  comprising  ''Harmony  of  Inter 
ests,"  "Money,"  "Letters  to  the  President,"  "French  and 
American  Tariffs,"  "Financial  Crises,"  "The  Way  to  Outdo 
England  without  Fighting  Her,"  "Resources  of  the  Union," 
"The  Public  Debt,"  "Contraction  or  Expansion,"  "Review 
of  the  Decade  1857 — '07,"  "Reconstruction,"  etc.  etc.  1  vol. 
8vo.,  cloth $4  50 

MONEY:  A  LECTURE  before  the  N.  Y.  Geographical  and  Sta 
tistical  Society.  8vo.,  paper  .....  25 

PAST,  PRESENT,  AND  FUTURE.     8vo.  .         .         .     $2  50 

PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIAL  SCIENCE.     3  volumes  8vo.,  cloth 

$10  00 

REVIEW  OF  THE  DECADE  1857— '07.     8vo.,  paper  60 

RECONSTRUCTION:  INDUSTRIAL,  FINANCIAL,  AND  PO 
LITICAL.  Letters  to  the  Hon.  Henry  Wilson,  U.  S.  S.  8vo, 
paper .  50 

THE  PUBLIC  DEBT,  LOCAL  AND  NATIONAL.  How  to 
provide  for  its  discharge  while  lessening  the  burden  of  Taxa 
tion.  Letter  to  David  A.  Wells,  Esq.,  U.  S.  Revenue  Commis 
sion.  8vo.,  paper  .......  25 

THE  RESOURCES  OF  THE  UNION.  A  Lecture  read,  Dec. 
1865,  before  the  American  Geographical  and  Statistical  So 
ciety,  N.  Y.,  and  before  the  American  Association  for  the  Ad 
vancement  of  Social  Science,  Boston  ...  50 

THE  SLAVE  TRADE,  DOMESTIC  AND  FOREIGN;  Why  it 
Exists,  and  How  it  may  be  Extinguished.  12mo.,  cloth  $1  5<3 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


LETTERS    ON    INTERNATIONAL    COPYRIGHT.      (18C7.) 
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RESUMPTION!  HOW  IT  MAY  PROFITABLY  BE  BROUGHT 
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$1  00 

WEALTH!  OF  WHAT  DOES  IT  CONSIST  ?    (1870.)   Paper  25 

QAMTJS.— A  TREATISE  ON  THE  TEETH  OF  WHEELS : 

Demonstrating  the  best  forms  which  can  be  given  to  them  for  the 
purposes  of  Machinery,  guch  as  Mill-work  and  Clock-work.  Trans 
lated  from  the  French  of  M.  CAMUS.  By  JOHN  I.  HAWKINS. 
Illustrated  by  40  plates.  Svo $3  00 

QOXE.— MINING  LEGISLATION. 

A  paper  read  before  the  Am.  Social  Science  Association.  By 
ECKLKY  B.  COXB.  Paper 20 

pOLBURN.— THE  GAS-WORKS  OF  LONDON: 

Comprising  a  sketch  of  the  Gas-works  of  the  city,  Process  of 
Manufacture,  Quantity  Produced,  Cost,  Profit,  etc.  By  ZERAH 
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nOLBURN.— THE  LOCOMOTIVE  ENGINE: 

Including  a  Description  of  its  Structure,  Rules  for  Estimat 
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tion  and  Management.  By  ZERAII  COLBURN.  Illustrated.  A 
new  edition.  12mo. $1  25 

nOLBURN  AND  MAW.— THE  WATER- WORKS  OF  LONDON : 
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works.     By  ZERAH  COLBURN  and  W.  MAW.     Reprinted  from 
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30  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


TJIRCKS.— PERPETUAL  MOTION : 

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19th  centuries.  Illustrated  from  various  authentic  sources  in 
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TjTXON.—THE  PRACTICAL  MILLWRIGHT'S  AND  ENGINEER'S 
**     GUIDE; 

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TjTJSSAUCE.— A  NEW  AND    COMPLETE    TREATISE    ON  THE 
**     ARTS  OF  TANNING,  CURRYING,  AND  LEATHER  DRESS- 
ING: 

Comprising  all  the  Discoveries  and  Improvements  made  in 
France,  Great  Britain,  and  the  United  States.  Edited  from 
Notes  and  Documents  of  Messrs.  Sallerou,  Grouvelle,  Duval, 
Dessables,  Labarraque,  Payen,  Rene",  De  Fontenelle,  Mala- 
peyre,  etc.  etc.  By  Prof.  II.  DUSSAUCE,  Chemist.  Illustrated 

by  212  wood  engravings.     8vo $10  00 

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tracts  from  the  Reports  of  the  International  Jury  on  Soaps,  as 
exhibited  in  the  Paris  Universal  Exposition,  1867,  numerous 
Tables,  etc.  etc.  Illustrated  by  engravings.  In  one  volume  Svo. 

of  over  800  pages $10  00 

TYUSSAUCE.— PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  THE  FABRICATION 
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DERS. 
Ty  Professor  II.  DUSSAUCE.     12mo.  .        .         .     §3  00 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE.        71 

jyJSSAUCE.— A  PRACTICAL  GUIDE  FOE  THE  PERFUMER: 
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Beauty  without  being  injurious  to  the  Health,  comprising  a 
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ula)  of  more  than  one  thousand  Preparations,  such  as  Cosme 
tics,  Perfumed  Oils,  Tooth  Powders,  Waters,  Extracts,  Tinc 
ture?,  Infusions,  Yinaigres,  Essential  Oils,  Pastels,  Creams, 
Soaps,  and  many  new  Hygienic  Products  not  hitherto  described. 
Edited  from  Notes  and  Documents  of  Messrs.  Debay,  Lunel, 
etc.  With  additions  by  Professor  H.Dus SAUCE,  Chemist.  12mo. 

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nUSSAUCE.— A  GENERAL  TREATISE  ON  THE  MANUFACTURE 
OF  VINEGAR,  THEORETICAL  AND  PRACTICAL. 
Comprising  the  rarious  methods,  by  the  slow  and  the  quick  pro 
cesses,  with  Alcohol,  Wine,  Grain,  Cider,  and  Molasses,  as  wel\ 
as  the  Fabrication  of  Wood  Vinegar,  etc.  By  Prof.  II.  DUSSAUCK. 
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plain  Directions  for  Preparing,  Washing-off,  and  Finishing  tho 
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12  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


•PASTON.— A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  STREET  OR  HORSE- 
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Their  Location,  Construction,  and  Management ;  with  General 
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ther  with  Examinations  as  to  their  Comparative  Advantages 
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ing  thereto.  By  ALEXANDER  EASTON,  C.  E.  Illustrated  by  23 
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pORSYTH.— BOOK  OF  DESIGNS  FOR  H3AD-STONES,  MURAL, 
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pAIRBAIRN.— THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  MECHANISM  AND  MA- 

•*•      CHINERY  OF  TRANSMISSION : 

Comprising  the  Principles  of  Mechanism,  Wheels,  and  Pulleys, 
Strength  and  Proportions  of  Shafts,  Couplings  of  Shafts,  and 
Engaging  and  Disengaging  Gear.  By  WILLIAM  FAIRBAIRN, 
Esq.,  C.  E.,  LL.  D.,  F.  R.  S.,  F.  G.  S.,  Corresponding  Member 
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By  WILLIAM  FAIRBAIRX,  C.  E  ,  LL.  D.,  F.  R.  S.,  F.  G.  S.  Au 
thor  of  "Principles of  Mechanism  and  the  Machinery  of  Trans 
mission."  With  Numerous  Illustrations.  In  one  volume.  (In 
press.) 

pILBART.— A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  BANKING: 

x  By  JAME.S  WILLIAM  GILBART.     To  which  is  added:  THE  NA 
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pESNER.— A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  COAL,  PETROLEUM, 
**     AND  OTHER  DISTILLED  OILS. 

By  ABRAHAM  GESNER,  M.  D.,  F.  G.  S.  Second  edition,  revised 
and  enlarged.  By  GEORGE  WELTDEN  GESNER,  Consulting 
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HENHY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE.       13 


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Being  a  Practical  Guide  to  their  Chemical  and  Physical  Pro 
perties,  their  Preparation,  Composition,  and  Uses.  Translated 
from  the  French  of  A.  GUETTIER,  Engineer  and  Director  of 
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tions:  with  a  Practical  Treatise  on  House-Painting.  By  D. 
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TTUGHES.— AMERICAN    MILLER    AND    MILLWRIGHT'S    AS- 

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14  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 

TTUNT.— THE  PEACTICE  OF  PHOTOGEAPHY. 

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JOHNSTON.— INSTETICTIONS  FOE  THE  ANALYSIS  OF  SOILS, 
U      LIMESTONES,  AND  MANUEES- 

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TTEENE.— A  HAND-BOOK  OF  PEACTICAL  GAUGING, 

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HENRY  CAHEY  BATRD'S  CATALOGUE,  15 

1£ENTISH.— A  TKEATISE  ON  A  BOX  OF  INSTRUMENTS, 

And  the  Slide  Rule ;  with  the  Theory  of  Trigonometry  and  Lo 
garithms,  including  Practical  Geometry,  Surveying,  Measur 
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TTOBELL.— ERNI.—  MINERALOGY  SIMPLIFIED : 

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Agriculture,  author  of  "Coal  Oil  and  Petroleum."  In  one 
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TANDRIN.— A  TREATISE  ON  STEEL : 

Comprising  its  Theory,  Metallurgy,  Properties,  Practical  Work 
ing,  and  Use.  By  M.  H.  C.  LANDRIN,  Jr.,  Civil  Engineer. 
Translated  from  the  French,  with  Notes,  by  A.  A.  FESQUET, 
Chemist  and  Engineer.  With  an  Appendix  on  the  Bessemer 
and  the  Martin  Processes  for  Manufacturing  Steel,  from  the 
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TARKIN.— THE  PRACTICAL  BRASS  AND  IRON  FOUNDER'S 
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cess,  etc.  etc.  By  JAMES  LARKIN,  late  Conductor  of  the  Brass 
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Philadelphia.  Fifth  edition,  revised,  with  extensive  Addi 
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16  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 

T  EAVITT.— FACTS  ABOUT  PEAT  AS  AN  ARTICLE  OF  FUEL: 
With  Remarks  upon  its  Origin  and  Composition,  the  Localities 
in  which  it  is  found,  the  Methods  of  Preparation  and  Manu 
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ther  with  many  other  matters  of  Practical  and  Scientific  Inte 
rest  To  which  is  added  a  chapter  on  the  Utilization  of  Coal 
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TEROUX,— A    PRACTICAL    TREATISE    ON    THE    MANUFAC- 

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Translated  from  the  French  of  CHARLES  LEHOUX,  Mechanical 
Engineer,  and  Superintendent  of  a  Spinning  Mill.  •  By  Dr,  H. 
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HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE.  17 

MAIN  AND  BROWN.— QUESTIONS  ON  SUBJECTS  CONNECTED 

JXL  WITH  THE  MARINE  STEAM-ENGINE : 

And  Examination  Papers ;  with  Hints  for  their  Solution.  By 
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JyJAIN  AND  BROWN.— THE  INDICATOR  AND  DYNAMOMETEI : 
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THOMAS  J.  MAIN,  M.  A.  F.  R.,  Ass't  Prof.  Royal  Naval  College, 
Portsmouth,  and  THOMAS  BROWN,  Assoc.  Inst.  C.  E.,  Chief  En 
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M 


AIN  AND  BROWN  —THE  MARINE  STEAM-ENGINE. 
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Royal  Naval  College,  and  THOMAS  BROWN,  Assoc.  Inst.  C.  E. 
Chief  Engineer,  R.  N.  Attached  to  the  Royal  Naval  College. 
Authors  of  "Questions  Connected  with  the  Marine  Steam-En 
gine,"  and  the  '•  Indicator  and  Dynamometer."  With  numerous. 
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Showing  the  Proper  Arrangement  of  Wheels  for  Cutting  the 
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Making  the  Universal  Gas-Pipe  Thread  and  Taps.  By  W.  A. 

MARTIN,  Engineer.     Svo 50 

TUTILES— A  PLAIN  TREATISE  ON  HORSE-SHOEING. 

With  Illustrations.  By  WILLIAM  MILES,  author  of  "  The  Horse's 
Foot" 

TV/POLES  WORTH  .—POCKET-BOOK  OF  USEFUL  FORMULA  AND 
±V1  MEMORANDA  FOR  CIVIL  AND  MECHANICAL  EN3INEERS. 
By  GUILFORD  L.  MOLESWORTH,  Member  of  the  Institution  of 
Civil  Engineers,  Chief  Resident  Engineer  of  the  Ceylon  Railway. 
Second  American  from  the  Tenth  London  Edition.  In  one 
volume,  full  bound  in  pocket-book  form  .  .  ,  .  $2  00 

OORE.— THE  INVENTOR'S  GUIDE: 

Patent  Office  and  Patent  Laws  :  or,  a  Guide  to  Inventors,  and  a 
Book  of  Reference  for  Judges,  Lawyers,  Magistrates,  and  others. 

By  J    G.MOORE.     12mo.,  cloth $125 

APIER.— A  MANUAL  OF  ELECTRO-METALLURGY : 
Including  the  Application  of  the  Art  to  Manufacturing  Processes. 
By  JAMES  NAPIER.     Fourth  American,  from  the  Fourth  London 
edition,   revised   and   enlarged.     Illustrated  by  engravings.     In 
one  volume,  Svo $2  00 


M 


N 


18  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


.— A  SYSTEM  OF  CHEMISTRY  APPLIED  TO  DYEING  : 
•^  BY  JAMES  NAPIER,  F.  C.  S.  A  New  and  Thoroughly  Revised 
Edition,  completely  brought  up  to  the  present  state  of  the 
Science,  including  the  Chemistry  of  Coal  Tar  Colors.  By  A.  A. 
FESQUET,  "Chemiet  and  Engineer.  With  an  Appendix  on  Dyeing 
and  Calico  Printing,  as  shown  at  the  Paris  Universal  Exposition 
of  1867,  from  the  Reports  of  the  International  Jury,  etc.  Illus 
trated.  In  one  volume  8vo.,  400  pages  .  .  .  $5  00 

•VTEWBERY.— GLEANINGS    FROM    ORNAMENTAL    ART    OF 
1N    EVERY  STYLE; 

Drawn  from  Examples  in  the  British,  South  Kensington,  Indian, 
Crystal  Palace,  and  other  Museums,  the  Exhibitions  of  1851  and 
1862,  and  the  best  English  and  Foreign  works.  In  a  series  of  one 
hundred  exquisitely  drawn  Plates,  containing  many  hundred  ex 
amples.  By  ROBERT  NEWBERY.  4to $15  00 

JJICHOLSON.— A  MANUAL  OF  THE  ART  OF  BOOK-BINDING: 

Containing  full  instructions  in  the  different  Branches  of  Forward 
ing,  Gilding,  and  Finishing.  Also,  the  Art  of  Marbling  Book- 
edges  and  Paper.  By  JAMES  B.  NICHOLSON.  Illustrated.  12mo. 
cloth  ....  $2  25 

fJORRIS.— A  HAND-BOOK  FOR  LOCOMOTIVE  ENGINEERS  AND 

1)1    MACHINISTS: 

Comprising  the  Proportions  and  Calculations  for  Constructing 
Locomotives ;  Manner  of  Setting  Valves ;  Tables  of  Squares, 
Cubes,  Areas,  etc.  etc.  By  SEPTIMUS  NORRIS,  Civil  and  Me 
chanical  Engineer.  New  edition.  Illustrated,  12mo.,  cloth 

$2  00 

STROM.  — ON  TECHNOLOGICAL  EDUCATION  AND  THE 
CONSTRUCTION  OF  SHIPS  AND  SCREW  PROPELLERS : 

For  Naval  and  Marine  Engineers.  By  JOHN  W.  NYSTROM,  late 
Acting  Chief  Engineer  U.  S.  N.  Second  edition,  revised  with 
additional  matter.  Illustrated  by  seven  engravings.  12mo. 

$2  50 

Q'NEILL.— A  DICTIONARY  OF  DYEING  AND  CALICO  PRINT- 
U    ING: 

Containing  a  brief  account  of  all  the  Substances  and  Processes  in 
use  in  the  Art  of  Dyeing  and  Printing  Textile  Fabrics  :  with  Prac 
tical  Receipts  and  Scientific  Information.  By  CHARLES  O'NEILL, 
Analytical  Chemist ;  Fellow  of  the  Chemical  Society  of  London  ; 
Member  of  the  Literary  and  Philosophical  Society  of  Manchester  ; 
Author  of  ' '  Chemistry  of  Calico  Printing  and  Dyeing. "  To  which 
is  added  An  Essay  on  Coal  Tar  Colors  and  their  Application  to 


NY 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE.  19 

Dyeing  and  Calico  Printing.  By  A.  A.  FESQUET,  Chemist  and 
Engineer.  With  an  Appendix  on  Dyeing  and  Calico  Printing,  ns 
shown  at  the  Exposition  of  1867,  from  the  Reports  of  the  Interna. 
tionalJury,  etc.  In  one  volume  8vo.,  491  pages  .  .  $6  00 

QSBORN.-THE  METALLURGY  OF  IRON  AND  STEEL: 

Theoretical  and  Practical  :  In  all  its  Branches  ;  With  Special  Re 
ference  to  American  Materials  and  Processes.  By  II.  S.  OSBORN, 
LL.  D.,  Professor  of  Mining  and  Metallurgy  in  Lafayette  College, 
Easton,  Pa.  Illustrated  by  230  Engravings  on  Wood,  and  6 
Folding  Plates.  8vo.,  972  pages $10  00 

QSBORN.— AMERICAN  MINES  AND  MINING  : 

V     Theoretically  and  Practically  Considered.     By  Prof.   II.   S.    Os- 
BORN,  Illustrated  by  numerous  engravings.  8vo.    (In  preparation.) 

pAINTER,  GILDER,  AND  VARNISHER'S  COMPANION : 

Containing  Rules  and  Regulations  in  everything  relating  to  the 
Arts  of  Painting,  Gilding,  Varnishing,  and  Glass  Staining,  with 
numerous  useful  and  valuable  Receipts;  Tests  for  the  Detection 
of  Adulterations  in  Oils  and  Colors,  and  a  statement  of  the  Dis 
eases  and  Accidents  to  which  Painters,  Gilders,  and  Varnishers 
are  particularly  liable,  with  the  simplest  methods  of  Prevention 
and  Remedy.  With  Directions  for  Graining,  Marbling,  Sign  Writ 
ing,  and  Gilding  on  Glass.  To  which  are  added  COMPLETE  INSTRUC 
TIONS  FOR  COACH  PAINTING  AND  VARNISHING.  12mo.,  cloth,  $1  50 

pALLETT.— THE    MILLER'S,    MILLWRIGHT'S,    AND    ENGI- 

•*•     NEER'S  GUIDE. 

By  HENRY  PALLETT.     Illustrated.     In  one  vol.  12mo.      .     $3  00 

pZRKINS.— GAS  AND  VENTILATION. 

Practical  Treatise  on  Gas  and  Ventilation.  With  Special  Relation 
to  Illuminating,  Heating,  and  Cooking  by  Gas.  Including  Scien 
tific  Helps  to  Engineer-students  and  others.  With  illustrated 
Diagrams.  By  E.  E.  PERKINS.  12mo.,  cloth  .  .  .  $1  25 

pEEKINS  AND  STOWE.— A  NEW  GUIDE  TO  THE  SHEET-IRON 

X     AND  BOILER  PLATE  ROLLER: 

Containing  a  Series  of  Tables  showing  the  Weight  of  Slabs  and 
Piles  to  Produce  Boiler  Plates,  and  of  the  Weight  of  Piles  and  the 
Sizes  of  Bars  to  Produce  Sheet-iron  ;  the  Thickness  of  the  Bar 
Gauge  in  Decimals ;  the  Weight  per  foot,  and  the  Thickness  on 
the  Bar  or  Wire  Gauge  of  the  fractional  parts  of  an  inch ;  the 
Weight  per  sheet,  and  the  Thickness  on  the  Wire  Gauge  of  Sheet- 
iron  of  various  dimensions  to  weigh  112  Ibs.  per  bundle ;  and  the 
conversion  of  Short  Weight  into  Long  Weight,  and  Long  Weight 
into  Short.  Estimated  and  collected  by  G.  H.  PERKINS  and  J.  G- 
$2  50 


20  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 

PHILLIPS  AND  DARLINGTON.—  RECORDS  OF  MINING  AND 

*     METALLURGY : 

Or,  Facts  and  Memoranda  for  the  use  of  the  Mine  Agent  and 
Smelter.  By  J.  ARTHUR  PHILLIPS,  Mining  Engineer,  Graduate  of 
the  Imperial  School  of  Mines,  France,  etc.,  and  JOHN  DARLINGTON. 
Illustrated  hy  numerous  engravings.  In  one  vol.  12mo.  .  $2  00 

pRADAL,    MALEPEYRE,     AND     DUSSATJCE.  —  A    COMPLETE 

X     TREATISE  ON  PERFUMERY: 

Containing  notices  of  the  Raw  Material  used  in  the  Ait,  and  the 
Best  Formula;.  According  to  the  most  approved  Methods  followed 
in  France,  England,  and  the  United  States.  By  M.  P.  PRADAL, 
Perfumer-Chemist,  and  M.  F.  MALEPEYRE.  Translated  from  the 
French,  with  extensive  additions,  by  Prof.  H.  DUSSATJCE.  8vo.  $10 

pROTEAUX.— PRACTICAL   GUIDE  FOR  THE  MANUFACTURE 

-1-     OF  PAPER  AND  BOARDS. 

By  A.  PROTEATJX,  Civil  Engineer,  and  Graduate  of  the  School  of 
Arts  and  Manufactures,  Director  of  Thiers's  Paper  Mill,  'Puy-de- 
Dome.  With  additions,  by  L.  S.  LE  NORMAND.  Translated  from 
the  French,  with  Notes,  by  HORATIO  PAINE,  A.  B.,  M.  D.  To 
which  is  added  a  Chapter  on  the  Manufacture  of  Paper  from  Wood 
in  the  United  States,  by  HENRY  T.  BROWN,  of  the  "American 
Artisan."  Illustrated  by  six  plates,  containing  Drawings  of  Raw 
Materials,  Machinery,  Plans  of  Paper-Mills,  etc.  etc.  8vo.  $5  00 

•REGNAULT.— ELEMENTS  OF  CHEMISTRY. 

By  M.  V.  REGNAULT.  Translated  from  the  French  by  T.  FOR 
REST  BENTON,  M.  Ik,  and  edited,  with  notes,  by  JAMES  C.  BOOTH, 
Melter  and  Refiner  U.  S.  Mint,  and  WM.  L.  FABER,  Metallurgist 
and  Mining  Engineer.  Illustrated  by  nearly  700  wood  engravings. 
Comprising  nearly  1500  pages.  In  two  vols.  8vo.,  cloth  $10  00 

•DEID.— A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF 

•"    PORTLAND  CEMENT: 

By  HENRY  REID,  C.  E.  To  which  is  added  a  Translation  of  M. 
A.  Lipowitz's  Work,  describing  a  new  method  adopted  in  Germany 
of  Manufacturing  that  Cement.  By  W.  F.  REID.  Illustrated  by 
plates  and  wood  engravings.  8vo.  .  .  .  .  $7  00 

•DIFFAULT,    VERGNAUD,    AND    TOUSSAINT.— A   PRACTICAL 

11   TREATISE    ON    THE    MANUFACTURE    OF    COLORS    FOR 
PAINTING: 

Containing  the  best  Formulae  and  the  Processes  the  Newest  and 
in  most  General  Use.  By  MM.  RIFFAULT,  YERONAUD,  find  TOUS 
SAINT.  Revised  and  Edited  by  M.  F.  MALEPEYRE  and  Dr.  EMIT* 
"WINCKLER.  Illustrated  by  Engravings.  In  one  vol.  SYO.  (/?* 
f reparation.) 


HENRY  CAREY  BATRD'S  CATALOGUE.  21 


TjIFFAULF,    VERGNAUD,    AND    TOUSSAINT.— A    PRACTICAL 
±l)    TREATISE  ON  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  VARNISHES : 

By  MM.  RIFFAULT,  VERGXAUD,  and  TOUSSAINT.  Revised  and 
Edited  by  M.  F.  MALEPEYRE  and  Dr.  EMIL  WINCKLER.  Illus 
trated.  In  one  vol.  8vo.  (I ti  preparation.) 

OHUNK.— A   PRACTICAL   TREATISE    ON    RAILWAY    CURVES 
W    AND  LOCATION,  FOR  YOUNG  ENGINEERS. 

By  WM.  F.  SHUNK,  Civil  Engineer.    12mo.,  tucks    .         .     $2  00 


S 


MEATON.—  BUILDER'S  POCKET  COMPANION: 

Containing  the  Elements  of  Building,  Surveying,  and  Architec 
ture  ;  with  Practical  Rules  and  Instructions  connected  with  the  sub- 
ject.  By  A.  C.  SMEATON,  Civil  Engineer,  etc.  In  one  volume, 
12mo  ...........  $1  50 

gMITH.—  THE  DYER'S  INSTRUCTOR: 

Comprising  Practical  Instructions  in  the  Art  of  Dyeing  Silk,  Cot 
ton,  Wool,  and  Worsted,  and  Woollen  Goods  :  containing  nearly 
800  Receipts.  To  which  is  added  a  Treatise  on  the  Art  of  Pad 
ding  ;  and  the  Printing  of  Silk  Warps,  Skeins,  and  Handkerchiefs, 
and  the  various  Mordants  and  Colors  for  the  different  styles  of 
such  work.  By  DAVID  SMITH,  Pattern  Dyer,  12mo.,  cloth 

$3  00 
OMITH.-THE  PRACTICAL  DYER'S  GUIDE: 

Comprising  Practical  Instructions  in  the  Dyeing  of  Shot  Cobourgs, 
Silk  Striped  Orleans,  Colored  Orleans  from  Black  Warps,  ditto 
from  White  Warps,  Colored  Cobourgs  from  White  Warps,  Merinos, 
Yarns,  Woollen  Cloths,  etc.  Containing  nearly  300  Receipts,  to 
most  of  which  a  Dyed  Pattern  is  annexed.  Also,  a  Treatise  on 
the  Art  of  Padding.  By  DAVID  SMITH.  In  one  vol.  8vo.  $25  00 

OHAW.—  CIVIL  ARCHITECTURE: 

Being  a  Complete  Theoretical  and  Practical  System  of  Building, 
containing  the  Fundamental  Principles  of  the  Art.  By  EDWARD 
SHAW,  Architect.  To  which  is  added  a  Treatise  on  Gothic  Archi 
tecture,  &c.  By  THOMAS  W.  SILLOWAY  and  GEORGE  M.  HARD 
ING  ,  Architects.  The  whole  illustrated  by  102  quarto  plates  finely 
engraved  on  copper.  Eleventh  Edition.  4to.  Cloth.  $10  00 

SLOAN.—  AMERICAN  HOUSES: 
A  variety  of  Original  Designs  for  Rural  Buildings.     Illustrated  by 
26  colored  Engravings,  with  Descriptive  References.     By  SAMUEL 
SLOAN,  Architect,  author  of  the  "  Model  Architect,"  eto.  etc.    8vo. 

$2  50 


.—  RESEARCHES   ON   THE   ACTION   OF   THE   BLAST. 
FURNACE. 

By  CHAS.  SCHINZ,     Seven  plates.     12mo.         .        .        .     $4  25 


22  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 

OMITH.— PARKS  AND  PLEASURE  GROUNDS : 

Or,  Practical  Notes  on  Country  Residences,  Villas,  Public  P.irks, 
and  Gardens.  By  CHARLES  H.  J.  SMITH,  Landscape  Gardener 
and  Garden  Architect,  etc.  etc.  12mo.  .  ,  .  $2  25 

OTOKES.— CABINET-MAKER'S  AND  UPHOLSTERER'S  COMPA- 
°    NION: 

Comprising  the  Rudiments  and  Principles  of  Cabinet-making  and 
Upholstery,  with  Familiar  Instructions,  Illustrated  by  Examples 
for  attaining  a  Proficiency  in  fie  Art  of  Drawing,  as  applicable 
to  Cabinet-work  ;  The  Processes  of  Veneering,  Inlaying,  and 
Buhl-work  ;  the  Art  of  Dyeing  and  Staining  Wood,  Bone,  Tortoise 
Shell,  etc.  Directions  for  Lackering,  Japanning, and  Varnishing; 
to  make  French  Polish  ;  to  prepare  the  Best  Glues,  Cements,  and 
Compositions,  and  a  number  of  Receipts,  particularly  for  workmen 
generally.  By  J.  STOKES.  In  one  vol.  12mo.  With  illustrations 

$1  25 
STRENGTH  AND  OTHER  PROPERTIES  OF  METALS, 

Reports  of  Experiments  on  the  Strength  and  other  Properties  of 
Metals  for  Cannon.  With  a  Description  of  the  Machines  for  Test 
ing  Metals,  and  of  the  Classification  of  Cannon  in  service.  By 
Officers  of  the  Ordnance  Department  U.  S.  Army.  By  authority 
of  the  Secretary  of  War.  Illustrated  by  25  large  steel  plates.  In 
1  vol.  quarto .  $10  00 

SULLIVAN.— PROTECTION  TO  NATIVE  INDUSTRY. 

^    By  Sir  EDWARD  SULLIVAN,  Baronet.    (1870.)     8vo.         .     $150 

mABLES  SHOWING  THE  WEIGHT  OF  ROUND,  SQUARE,  AND 
1     FLAT  BAR  IRON,  STEEL,  ETC. 

By  Measurement.     Cloth 63 

rpAYLOR.— STATISTICS  OF  COAL: 

•^  Including  Mineral  Bituminous  Substances  employed  in  Arts  and 
Manufactures  ;  with  their  Geographical,  Geological,  and  Commer 
cial  Distribution  and  amount  of  Production  and  Consumption  on 
the  American  Continent.  With  Incidental  Statistics  of  the  Iron 
Manufacture.  By  R.  C.  TAYLOR.  Second  edition,  revised  by  S. 
S.  HALDEMAN.  Illustrated  by  five  Maps  and  many  wood  engrav 
ings.  8vo.,  cloth $6  00 

MPLETON.— THE  PRACTICAL  EXAMINATOR  ON  STEAM 
AND  THE  STEAM-ENGINE  : 

With  Instructive  References  relative  thereto,  for  the  Use  of  Engi 
neers,  Students,  and  others.  By  WM.  TEMPLETON,  Engineer  32mo- 

$1  25 


rpE 


HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE.  23 

rPHOMAS.— THE  MODERN  PRACTICE  OF  PHOTOGRAPHY. 

•*•     By  R.  W.  THOMAS,  F.C.S.     8vo.,  cloth  .         ...          75 

'TOOMSON.— FREIGHT  CHARGES  CALCULATOR. 

By  ANDREW  THOMSON,  Freight  Agent       .         .         .  $1  25 

••TURNING :  SPECIMENS  OF  FANCY  TURNING  EXECUTED  ON 

-1-     THE  HAND  OR  FOOT  LATHE: 

With  Geometric,  Oval,  and  Eccentric  Chucks,  and  Elliptical  Cut 
ting  Frame.  By  an  Amateur.  Illustrated  by  30  exquisite  Pho 
tographs.  4to $3  00 

^TURNER'S  (THE)  COMPANION: 

Containing  Instructions  in  Concentric,  Elliptic,  and  Eccentrio 
Turning ;  also  various  Plates  of  Chucks,  Tools,  and  Instru 
ments  ;  and  Directions  for  using  the  Eccentric  Cutter,  Drill, 
Vertical  Cutter,  and  Circular  Rest;  with  Patterns  and  Instruc 
tions  for  working  them.  A  new  edition  in  1  vol.  12mo.  $1  50 

TTRBIN  — BRULL.  — A   PRACTICAL    GUIDE    FOR   PUDDLING 
U    IRON  AND  STEEL. 

By  ED.  URBIN,  Engineer  of  Arts  and  Manufactures.  A  Prize 
Essay  read  before  the  Association  of  Engineers,  Graduate  of  the 
School  of  Mines,  of  Liege,  Belgium,  at  the  Meeting  of  1865-6. 
To  which  is  added  a  COMPARISON  OP  THE  RESISTING  PROPERTIES 
OF  IRON  AND  STEEL.  By  A.  BRULL.  Translated  from  the  French 
by  A.  A.  FESQUET,  Chemist  and  Engineer.  In  one  volume,  8vo. 

$1  00 

T70GDES.— THE  ARCHITECT'S  AND  BUILDER'S  POCKE1  COM- 
V     PANION  AND  PRICE  BOOK, 

By  F.  W.  VOGDES,  Architect.  Illustrated.  Full  bound  in  pocket- 
book  form $2  00 

In  book  form,  18mo.,  muslin 1  50 

•TKTARN.— THE  SHEET  METAL  WORKER'S  INSTRUCTOR,  FOR 
"  ZINC,    SHEET-IRON,    COPPER   AND    TIN   PLATE    WORK 
ERS,  &c. 

By  REUBEN  HENRY  WARN,  Practical  Tin  Plate  Worker.  Illus 
trated  by  32  plates  and  37  wood  engravings.  8vo.  .  .  $3  CO 

nn-ATSON.— A  MANUAL  OF  THE  HAND-LATHE. 

''By  EGBERT  P.  WATSON,  Late  of  the  "  Scientific  American,"  Au 
thor  of  "Modern  Practice  of  American  Machinists  and  Engi 
neers,"  In  one  volume,  12mo. $1  50 


24  HENRY  CAREY  BAIRD'S  CATALOGUE. 


•nrTATSON.—  THE    MODERN   PRACTICE    OF  AMERICAN    MA- 
VV   CHINISTS  AND  ENGINEERS: 

Including  the  Construction,  Application,  and  Use  of  Brills,  Lathe 
Tools,  Cutters  for  Boring  Cylinders,  and  Hollow  Work  Generally, 
with  the  most  Economical  Speed  of  the  same,  the  Results  verified 
by  Actual  Practice  at  the  Lathe,  the  Vice,  and  on  the  Floor. 
Together  with  Workshop  management,  Economy  of  Manufacture, 
the  Steam-Engine,  Boilers,  Gears,  Belting,  etc.  etc.     By  EGBERT 
P.  WATSON,  late  of  the  "Scientific  American."     Illustrated  by 
eighty-six  engravings.     12mo.  .....     $2  50 

•YKTATSON.—  THE  THEORY  AND  PRACTICE   OF  THE  ART  OF 
VY  WEAVING  BY  HAND  AND  POWER: 

With  Calculations  and  Tables  for  the  use  of  those  connected  with 
the  Trade.  By  JOHN  WATSON,  Manufacturer  and  Practical  Machine 
Maker.  Illustrated  by  large  drawings  of  the  best  Power-Looms. 
8vo.  ..........  $10  00 

nrrEATHERLY.—  TREATISE    ON  .THE  ART   OF  BOILING    SU- 
VV  GAR,    CRYSTALLIZING,     LOZENGE-MAKING,     COMFITS, 
GUM  GOODS, 

And  other  processes  for  Confectionery,  <fcc.  In  which  are  ex 
plained,  in  an  easy  and  familiar  manner,  the  various  Methods 
of  Manufacturing  every  description  of  Raw  and  Refined  Sugar 
Goods,  as  sold  by  Confectioners  and  others  .  .  $2  00 

LL.—  TABLES  FOR  QUALITATIVE  CHEMICAL  ANALYSIS. 
By  Prof.  HEINRICH  WILL,  of  Giessen,  Germany.  Seventh  edi 
tion.  Translated  by  CHARLES  F.  HIMES,  Ph.  D.,.  Professor  of 
Natural  Science,  Dickinson  College,  Carlisle,  Pa.  .  .  $1  25 

WILLIAMS.—  ON  HEAT  AND  STEAM  : 

Embracing  New  Views  of  Vaporization,  Condensation,  and  Expan 
sion.  By  CHARLES  WYE  WILLIAMS,  A.  I.  C.  E.  Illustrated.  8vo. 

$3  50 

'ORSSAM.-ON  MECHANICAL  SAWS: 

From  the  Transactions  of  the  Society  of  Engineers,  1867.  By 
S.  W.  WORSSAM,  Jr.  Illustrated  by  18  large  folding  plates.  8vo. 

$5  00 


W1 


W 


mOHLEK.-A  HAND-BOOK  OF  MINERAL  ANALYSIS. 

By  F.  WOHLER.  Edited  by  H.  B.  NASOX,  Professor  of  Chemistry, 
Rensselaer  Institute,  Troy,  N.  Y.  With  numerous  Illustrations. 
12mo.  $3  00 


